F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jim Suva : Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And then just given the macro cautiousness, how should we think about capital deployment, stock buyback, M&A, any changes there? Are you kind of holding, not holding up, reserving a little more for organic functions? Or how should we think about capital deployment versus maybe six, 12 months ago?

Frank Pelzer: Yes, Jim. So it really hasn’t — our outlook on capital deployment has not changed. We still expect to spend 50% of our free cash flow on share repurchase this year. And as you — as we mentioned earlier, we did pay down the term loan debt associated with the Shape acquisition, which was a little over $350 million use of cash in the quarter. And so that reflects the change in our cash balance and the $40 million share repurchase we did in Q1. And we obviously announced Lilac, which was an undisclosed sum. It was a small acquisition that we did today. And so the balance of the activities and how we said we’re going to use our capital has not changed, and we don’t anticipate that it will change going forward.

Operator: Our next question is from Fahad Najam with Loop Capital.

Fahad Najam : I want to revisit the software issues again. If you look at perpetual, it’s growing fairly steadily. So can you maybe help us understand in terms of the renewals, what the net retention rate saw maybe anything cohort analysis that you said it was in line? So maybe if you can just elaborate a little bit more? And then furthermore, I guess the question also is how should we be thinking about your exposure to legacy applications versus new modern applications? And if there’s anything you can share with us on how that mix is trending.

François Locoh-Donou: All right. Let me start with the legacy and modern applications and how the mix is trending. I would say it’s actually trending in line with the population of applications overall, which is that legacy applications are growing, I would say, in the single-digit percentage range in terms of the number of these applications out there deployed in the world. Whereas modern applications, we think are growing in the 30% range in terms of the number of them that are going into production on an annual basis. And so over time, there will be a lot more of the more than applications than the legacy applications. But where this gets blurred though, is that we’re also seeing a number of legacy applications get modernized where folks are adding modern component to an application that is already in production has already been generating revenue.

And this is where I think F5 has a specific advantage is that, yes, we play in modern applications with components like NGINX and excluding our Distributed Cloud Services. Yes, we play in legacy or traditional applications with platforms like BIG-IP. But for a lot of our customers, they want to have implementations that involve modernizing a legacy plate application and especially in an environment where customers are looking to consolidate vendors to simplify their operations, our ability to deliver on both of these requirements and actually deliver a single commercial vehicle where you can have both your modern and legacy application services is critical. And so that’s one of the ways that we’ve positioned the company to be able to serve both needs.

Over time, it will skew more towards modern applications as they grow faster.

Frank Pelzer: And we’re not offering any new metrics on software like net retention rates. I will say that as we mentioned for the renewal side of the business, which includes the SaaS business is the true forwards associated with the business and some of the second terms of our multiyear subscription agreements as largely came in as we expected. The shortfall that we experienced was largely due to the new software business that just didn’t drive growth in the way that we would have expected it in Q1.

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