Peak traffic on the Akamai platform exceeded 100 terabits per second every day in the second quarter, according to CEO Tom Leighton.
“That’s a lot of traffic,” said Leighton, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “Of course, many CDNs claim to have lots of capacity, but none get close to Akamai when it comes to the actual delivery of content.”
Leighton said that in June, Akamai began to see some deceleration in traffic growth. However, COVID-19 has accelerated trends toward online video streaming and cord cutting, and that has helped the company sustain the traffic bump it saw early in the pandemic.
“I’d say traffic was elevated probably longer than we had expected. We’ve never been through one of these, so it’s hard to always call it. But in terms of normal seasonality, I would expect to see, as the summer months come on, we do expect to see traffic certainly not grow as quickly as we saw the last quarter, but it’ll still be strong. But I would expect some seasonality that’s reflected in our guide,” Leighton said.
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Akamai said it gained traffic share in the second quarter on both an overall basis and at many large media companies. The company said it now works with more than 220 OTT and broadcasting companies as well as with 24 of the world’s 25 most popular video game publishers.
Revenue from Akamai’s media and carrier division totaled $390 million for the second quarter, up 19% year over year and 20%. The company attributed the growth to strong traffic growth in OTT video, gaming and software downloads, which was a continuation of elevated traffic the company saw in late March as shelter-in-place orders were issued around the world.
Akamai’s consolidated revenue totaled $795 million, a 13% increase over the second quarter of 2019. GAAP net income was $162 million, a 42% increase from one year ago.