F5 Inc at RBC Capital Markets Global Technology, Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference Transcript

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

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : I guess from an evolutionary perspective, F5 has gone through quite a journey with the move from kind of hardware to now a multiproduct software-oriented company. I guess before we get into some of the specifics, when you sit back and you reflect on the journey and where you are today, the question I often get from F5 is like what is the market missing? Is there still a misconception out there about F5? Because you've gone through a paradigm shift. I think a lot of people still think of you as a hardware company, and you're not. But is there anything that you would offer that you're like, no, the market still doesn't get this element of the F5 story?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : Excellent. I'm glad you covered that.

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : That you sort of like read my mind for where I was going with the next question, but there's just incredible complexity with that. Because I think we went from this paradigm if everything is going to be in the cloud, and then wow, maybe not everything, right? And so I think customers struggle with -- you know better than I do, how customers struggle with what is the right underlying infrastructure map of an organization. I guess, as you talk to customers and you think about that paradigm, I think for most large organizations, what is that mix of apps? Do you get a sense for now it's -- the mix is -- I don't know if -- it's probably hard to generalize, but like what is that right mix of where apps run in the future from your perspective?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : One more question for you, Francois, then Cooper. I'll get you with the question. But with kind of continuing on the thought process of AI, this is -- two years ago, AI was sort of like the last question that I was asked, sort of just what do you think about AI and now it's sort of question one, two and three and four. When you think about the demands that AI puts on customers in terms of -- like you said, data privacy, speed, latency, what are the things that we need to consider from an AI lens that F5 is uniquely positioned to help customers deal with?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : I lied, Cooper. I just wanted to double-click on that AI. One thing that we're picking up in some of our conversations with the executives, I think we saw these digital natives pushing the envelope on AI and the obvious frontier models and whatnot. And you have such a diverse customer base. Are you starting to see evidence of sort of the non-AI native cohort of customers increasing their AI journey? We may not be at an inflection point yet, but any observation on customer behavior in terms of their AI adoption of the non-AI native cohort?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : It's actually where I wanted to go next, Cooper. And you guys are coming off of a really strong 4Q, and I want to touch on the security incident in a second here. So excluding that, could you talk -- reflecting back on the year, which was really strong results all year long. As you sit in your seat today relative to a year ago, and you're looking at your model and you're looking at your forecast, what surprised you the most about the performance that you saw in fiscal '25 versus when you kind of set that initial forecast, because it was revised up really throughout the entire year? LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. NOVEMBER 19, 2025 / 6:20PM, FFIV.OQ - F5 Inc at RBC Capital Markets Global Technology, Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : I have to ask about the security incidents. It feels like even just yesterday, I had Cloudflare on stage, and there's an outage. It feels in CrowdStrike had one and Okta. I think your transparency was refreshing. And I think you guys were as transparent as you could have been at the time, as you have had more time to pass since that, and I want to ask about kind of how you thought about from a guidance perspective. But Francois, have you learned anything more about the impact of that, the response, the customer response to your messaging?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : Yeah. And I think you said it best. In times stress, I think it can make company stronger. And I think you said there's a lot of positives that come out of a situation like this. And it feels like you guys are solely focused on that. And then I guess, Cooper, from your perspective, as a CFO, how do you -- because you weren't really seeing much of an impact. How did you kind of think about handicapping that from a full year guidance perspective?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : Yeah. I mean, I think history has shown that for others, that's largely been the case, especially with swift action and transparency. Question for both of you sort of taking that piece aside, when you think about the '26 outlook, and if we're sitting here a year from now and we reflect back, what gives you optimism about this year? And you've alluded to some, Francois, in terms of some of the steps on AI and multi-cloud, but what are some of the things that we should think about that could push you guys in a positive direction on this guidance framework?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : Yeah. So it sounds like the foundation has been laid for this journey. And it feels like a lot of what you saw last year just continuing that evolution. I mean, Cooper, anything to add from your point of view?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : As I reflect on the DNA of F5, I wonder, you guys are such an interesting part of the network topology. And I think about your security business, in particular, I mean, are there any aspirations to go even deeper into the security stack? It could seem very logical for you guys to start thinking about SASE or data security, data privacy, kind of like DSPM. Any thoughts on kind of like how far you could push the security envelope of the portfolio?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : Yeah. It strikes me that you guys are in an increasingly complex world, you can take a lot of the complexity out of the equation for folks on many aspects of their network topology. Maybe just -- I mean, that was a great conversation. We have 30 seconds left. LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. NOVEMBER 19, 2025 / 6:20PM, FFIV.OQ - F5 Inc at RBC Capital Markets Global Technology, Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference Maybe put a bow on the conversation and in summary, it's just sort of like if you were to leave us with the most important point about F5 as we think about the future, we talked about a lot of exciting things today. I mean, how would you sort of like wrap the conversation up?

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : Yeah. So exciting time to be in technology. And especially if you're --

Question: Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : Exactly, exactly. Well, we're out of time, unfortunately, we can use a lot more time than that. But from all of us at RBC, thank you, both. Thank you for coming. Really appreciate your time and attendance. It was great.