The American manufacturer of solutions for information security (IS) F5 Networks reported revenue below market expectations, which led to a drop in quotations of the company by 7.2%.
For the three-month reporting period, closed on June 30, 2017, revenue of F5 was 517.8 million dollars, compared to $ 496.5 million a year earlier. Net profit for this time increased to 97.7 million dollars from 91.8 million dollars.
The adjusted profit, not taking into account some single incomes and costs, reached $ 2.03 per share, which is exactly the same as the analysts surveyed by FactSet. At the same time, they forecast a higher revenue - $ 525.6 million.
The F5 report shows that the company's quarterly service revenue rose to $ 282.7 million from $ 265.2 million a year ago. Sales of products increased from 231.4 to 235.1 million dollars.
Most of the revenues (about 65%) are generated by the company's contracts with corporate customers. The shares of communication operators and government customers in the company's revenue are measured at 21% and 15% respectively.
F5 Networks works in the field of network application delivery, enabling the world's largest enterprises and service providers to fully appreciate the benefits of using virtual environments, cloud computing and managing IT resources on demand. The largest distributors of F5 are Ingram Micro, Avnet and Westcon.
Earlier, the information agency "Reuters", referring to informed sources, reported that the management of F5 asked the investment bank Goldman Sachs Group for help in the sale of the company.
According to analysts at Citigroup, potential buyers of F5 include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell, EMC and Cisco.
The New York Post wrote that the purchase of F5 is also interested in the private investment firm Thoma Bravo. Currently, the market capitalization of F5 is about 8 billion dollars.
As a result of the current quarter, F5 expects adjusted earnings in the range of 2.2 to 2.23 dollars per share with revenue of $ 530-540 million, while Wall Street is predicted $ 2.23 per security and 551, 5 million dollars respectively.