Fortinet, Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Ken Xie: I think there is two parts. First, I totally agree with you said that SD-WAN and the OT market growing faster than the network security average. And on the other side, we do believe our solution has huge advantage compared to other competitors. So both SD-WAN, OT market is still pretty fragmented and compared to our home growth integrated solution and leverage for the ASIC company and power. So advantage much huge compared to other competitors, quite some mostly come from acquisition. And at the same time, they don’t have the ASIC help to increase speed, lower the cost and the power consumption. So that’s why we feel we’re keeping growing above the market, so above the market growth rate. There’s a different research about how the market is growing. But I do agree it’s a fast-growing market compared to the cybersecurity space and there will be a lot of potential going forward.

Saket Kalia: Got it. Got it. Very helpful. Keith, maybe just a quick follow-up for you. Actually, great to see the billings duration stay roughly similar. I’m curious if you could just talk anecdotally or just specifically just around how you’re thinking about billings duration here in ’23? And whether that’s been something that you feel like customers have pushed on given the interest rate environment that we’re in?

Keith Jensen: Yes. I don’t think that we’ve really seen customers push on the term. Obviously, at 28 months — 28 months, which is kind of been keeping where we’ve been historically. But I do think in the fourth quarter, we certainly had conversations with customers that were I think perhaps even more focused on cash flow, if you will, than they were on discounting in terms of extended payment terms and that sort of thing. So if I were to look at the — what I’m hearing back from customers, it was all about cash protection. And with that, I assume if I were trying to do a lot of five-year deals or something like that, I might have felt more pressure. But given the SMB mix of our business and our partner footprint, obviously, didn’t come through in the numbers really.

Saket Kalia: Yes, absolutely. Great to see. Thanks guys.

Operator: Thank you. One moment please. Our next question comes from the line of Hamza Fodderwala of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hamza Fodderwala: Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. Good evening. Keith, I wanted to clarify something you said about the cancellation rates. I think you mentioned that you’re seeing some changes there. Can you maybe elaborate on that a little bit? I think like the past few quarters, it’s been around 4%, 5%. Just if you could provide any more color on that comment?

Keith Jensen: Yes. We did see a pickup to if we want to call it mid-single digits in Q3, we saw it tick up to high-single-digits in fourth quarter — in the fourth quarter. And we’ve anticipated this, particularly as the backlog starts to shift its mix as the firewalls. There’s still a significant amount of firewalls in the backlog, but it really now has tilted towards the network equipment, the switches and the access points. And so as you would expect, one last comment on that, as we see the shift in the mix in the backlog as well as the pick-up in the cancellation rates, I would also offer that as part of the guidance setting process, I think we’ve taken a fairly conservative approach to cancellation rates on what they — how they may impact 2023 or said another way, we’re not expecting all the backlog that exists at the beginning of the year to convert in 2023 because we think there’ll be some cancellations.

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