Akamai Q4 revenue climbs 8% to $713M

Akamai on Wednesday reported fourth-quarter revenue totaling $713 million, up 8% over the $658 million it reported for the year-ago quarter.

The company saw substantial growth in its web division and media and carrier division. Web segment revenue rose 9% to $385 million, and media and carrier segment revenue rose 8% to $328 million. But it was Akamai’s cloud security solutions segment that sparked the most growth, up 36% to $185 million.

"We were very pleased with our strong finish to the year. Both revenue and earnings exceeded our expectations due to the very rapid growth of our cloud security business, robust seasonal traffic and our continued focus on operational excellence," said Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai, in a statement. "As a result, we achieved our fifth consecutive quarter of non-GAAP operating margin improvement, and we are well on our way to achieving our 30% margin goal in 2020, while continuing to invest in innovation and new products to drive future growth."

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But Akamai’s revenue from internet platform customers took a hit and ended up at $43 million, down 14% year over year.

While Akamai’s domestic U.S. revenues held mostly steady (up 2% year over year), international revenues totaled $279 million, up 20% year over year.

GAAP income from operations for the fourth quarter was $120 million, a 275% increase from fourth quarter 2017, and GAAP net income for the fourth quarter was $94 million, a 242% increase from the year-ago quarter.

Leighton said during the company’s earnings call that the media and carrier segment saw strong traffic growth last quarter thanks largely to OTT and gaming sectors.

“We continue to grow traffic faster than the Internet as a whole in Q4, which means that we continued to gain share and because of our relentless focus on efficiency, we actually spend less on network costs in 2018 than we spent in the prior year,” said Leighton, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.