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

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Ken Xie: I think we definitely have a pretty long tenure and a good team there. And at the same time, the case, the firewall case also expand quite well in Europe, in some countries there. And some of the service provider carrier, they are a little bit more ahead compared to some bigger service provider were the U.S. on moving some new solutions, including some 5G SD-WAN. So that’s where we continue to see some good growth there. Also, we kind of surprisingly even during the recession, the SMB sector growing quite strong compared to some enterprise. Enterprise more about how to lower the cost ownership, protect some of their own kind of profit margin. But SMB, they do see the importance of cyber security, especially in retina were they are starting more targeted SMB right now. So we do see quite strong growth in SMB and so that’s also helping some regions in Europe.

Andrew Nowinski: Got it. Okay. And then I wanted to ask about gross margins. So you talked about easing cost pressures and lower discounting as some of the levers that drove that better-than-expected gross margin. I guess, number one, how sustainable do you think those factors are as we look into fiscal ’23? And then when you launched new ASIC, like you did earlier today, is that a headwind to gross margin initially?

Keith Jensen: Yes. I think a few things we talked about price benefits, the discounting and then some easing of the impact of the supply chain. I think the price benefit is something that will obviously stay with us in the future. And so we should still get a tailwind from that. However, discounting and supply chains, call it, savings for lack of a better term, that’s what we relate to our history of price increases. And I think we kind of reached a very kind of maybe the high watermark in terms of being — having price increases covering those costs, and that will start to settle back down to a more normalized pattern going forward. Meaning that we’ll still have inflationary cost increases, but we’ve really slowed down the price benefits, the price increases. So net-net, price increases continue, discounting and supply chain benefits may not.

Andrew Nowinski: Got it. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment please. Our next question comes from the line of Raymond McDonough of Guggenheim Partners. Your line is open.

Raymond McDonough: Hi, thanks. Maybe for Ken or Keith. The last time we saw product growth accelerate for two years was back in 2014 and ’15, you had two really strong years of product growth, and that was followed by a pretty sharp deceleration of growth over the next two years. And I understand the business is a lot different than it was back then, but there does seem to be some similarities, at least how it relates to the macro environment and your results obviously point to you guys navigating it, the macro quite well. But you did reiterate your ’25 guidance, which I believe implies mid-teens product growth. So I guess the question is, why should we think this time is different? Is it just that you have a significantly larger portfolio of solutions?

Is it broader acceptance from customers willing to consolidate networking and security functionality. Any comparisons or contrast you can provide specifically as it relates to product growth versus, if you will, the previous cycle would be helpful.

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