Akamai Technologies 10-Q 2021-09-30

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-Q

(Mark One)

or

Commission file number 000-27275

Akamai Technologies, Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

145 Broadway

Cambridge, MA 02142

(617) 444-3000

(Address, Including Zip Code, and Telephone Number,

Including Area Code, of Registrant’s Principal Executive Offices)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes x No ¨

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes x No ¨

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ¨

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No x

The number of shares outstanding of the registrant’s common stock as of November 2, 2021: 162,479,916

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AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

FORM 10-Q

FOR THE QUARTERLY PERIOD ENDED SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

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PART I. FINANCIAL INFORMATION

AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

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AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS, continued

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the condensed consolidated financial statements.

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AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME

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This quarterly report on Form 10-Q, particularly Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations set forth below, and notes to our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements included herein contain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and are based on the beliefs and assumptions of our management as of the date hereof based on information currently available to our management. Use of words such as “believes,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “estimates,” “should,” “forecasts,” “if,” “continues,” “goal,” “likely” or similar expressions indicates a forward-looking statement. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results may differ materially from the forward-looking statements we make. See “Risk Factors” elsewhere in this quarterly report on Form 10-Q for a discussion of certain risks associated with our business. We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, including the potential impact of any mergers, acquisitions, divestitures or other events that may be announced after the date hereof.

Our management’s discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations is based upon our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which we have prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America, or GAAP, for interim periods and with Regulation S-X promulgated under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act. The preparation of these unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements requires us to make estimates and judgments that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenues and expenses and related items, including, but not limited to, revenue recognition, accounts receivable and related reserves, valuation and impairment of marketable securities, goodwill and acquired intangible assets, capitalized internal-use software development costs, impairment and useful lives of long-lived assets, income taxes and stock-based compensation. We base our estimates and judgments on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances at the time they are made. Actual results may differ from our estimates. See the section entitled "Application of Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates" in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year-ended December 31, 2020 for further discussion of our critical accounting policies and estimates.

Overview

We provide solutions to power and protect content and business applications over the internet. The key factors that influence our financial success are our ability to build on recurring revenue commitments for our security and performance offerings, increase media traffic on our network, effectively manage the prices we charge for our solutions, develop new products and carefully manage our capital spending and other expenses. The purpose of this discussion and analysis section is to describe and explain key trends, events and other factors that impacted our reported results and that are likely to impact our future performance.

Revenue

For most of our solutions, our customers commit to contracts having terms of a year or longer, which allows us to have a consistent and predictable base level of revenue. In addition to a base level of revenue, we are also dependent on media customers where usage of our solutions is more variable. As a result, our revenue is impacted by the amount of media and software download traffic we serve on our network, the rate of adoption of gaming, social media and video platform offerings, the timing and variability of customer-specific one-time events and geopolitical, economic and other developments that impact our customers' businesses. Seasonal variations that impact traffic on our network, such as holiday-related activities, can cause revenue fluctuations from quarter to quarter. Over the longer term, our ability to expand our product portfolio and to effectively manage the prices we charge for our solutions are key factors impacting our revenue growth.

We have observed the following trends related to our revenue in recent years:

• Increased sales of our security solutions have made a significant contribution to revenue growth. We plan to continue to invest in this area with a focus on further enhancing our product portfolio and extending our go-to-market capabilities, particularly in certain markets and through our channel partners.

• Over the past few years, we have experienced increases in the amount of traffic delivered for customers that use our solutions for video, gaming downloads and social media. During 2020, we saw a dramatic increase in traffic growth on our network related to the shutdowns and restrictions from the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic. Primarily

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as a result of the rollback of many pandemic-related restrictions, we have seen the rate of traffic growth moderate during 2021. We expect year-over-year traffic and associated revenue growth to continue to moderate during the remainder of 2021, assuming the restrictions experienced in 2020 continue to lessen.

• The prices paid by some of our customers have declined due to contract renewals and large media consolidations, reflecting the impact of competition and volume discounts. In the first nine months of 2021 as compared to the same period in 2020, we experienced a decline in revenue from website and application delivery solutions due to the above factors, particularly in the U.S. commerce vertical, and slowing media traffic growth. While we have increased committed recurring revenue from our solutions by upselling incremental solutions to our existing customers and adding new customers to offset the negative trends, we expect revenue challenges from our website and application performance solutions to continue during the remainder of 2021. In addition, there remains uncertainty about the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on some of our customers and how that uncertainty might impact purchases of our solutions.

• Revenue from our international operations has been growing at a faster pace than from our U.S. operations, particularly in terms of new customer acquisition and cross-selling of incremental solutions. Because we publicly report in U.S. dollars, if the dollar strengthens, our reported revenue results will be negatively impacted. Conversely, a weaker dollar would benefit our reported results.

• We have experienced variations in certain types of revenue from quarter to quarter. In particular, we typically experience higher revenue in the fourth quarter of each year for some of our solutions as a result of holiday season activity. In addition, we experience quarterly variations in revenue attributable to, among other things, the nature and timing of software and gaming releases by our customers; whether there are large live sporting or other events or situations (like the COVID-19 pandemic) that impact the amount of media traffic on our network; and the frequency and timing of purchases of custom solutions or licensed software.

Expenses

Our level of profitability is also impacted by our expenses, including direct costs to support our revenue such as bandwidth and co-location costs. We have observed the following trends related to our profitability in recent years:

• Our profitability improved in the first nine months of 2021 and the full year 2020 as compared to prior periods due to higher overall revenue as

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Interest Rate Risk

Our portfolio of cash equivalents and short- and long-term investments is maintained in a variety of securities, including U.S. government agency obligations, high-quality corporate debt securities, commercial paper, mutual funds and money market funds. The majority of our investments are classified as available-for-sale securities and carried at fair market value with cumulative unrealized gains or losses recorded as a component of accumulated other comprehensive loss within stockholders' equity. A sharp rise in interest rates could have an adverse impact on the fair market value of certain securities in our portfolio. We do not currently hedge our interest rate exposure and do not enter into financial instruments for trading or speculative purposes.

Foreign Currency Risk

Growth in our international operations will incrementally increase our exposure to foreign currency fluctuations as well as other risks typical of international operations that could impact our business, including, but not limited to, differing economic conditions, changes in political climate, differing tax structures and other regulations and restrictions.

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Transaction Exposure

Foreign exchange rate fluctuations may adversely impact our consolidated results of operations as exchange rate fluctuations on transactions denominated in currencies other than our functional currencies result in gains and losses that are reflected in our condensed consolidated statements of income. We enter into short-term foreign currency forward contracts to offset foreign exchange gains and losses generated by the re-measurement of certain assets and liabilities recorded in non-functional currencies. Changes in the fair value of these derivatives, as well as re-measurement gains and losses, are recognized in our condensed consolidated statements of income within other income (expense), net. Foreign currency transaction gains and losses from these forward contracts were determined to be immaterial during the nine months ended September 30, 2021. We do not enter into derivative financial instruments for trading or speculative purposes.

Translation Exposure

To the extent the U.S. dollar weakens against foreign currencies, the translation of these foreign currency-denominated transactions will result in increased revenue and operating expenses. Conversely, our revenue and operating expenses will decrease when the U.S. dollar strengthens against foreign currencies.

Foreign exchange rate fluctuations may also adversely impact our consolidated financial condition as the assets and liabilities of our foreign operations are translated into U.S. dollars in preparing our condensed consolidated balance sheet. These gains or losses are recorded as a component of accumulated other comprehensive loss within stockholders' equity.

Credit Risk

Concentrations of credit risk with respect to accounts receivable are limited to certain customers to which we make substantial sales. Our customer base consists of a large number of geographically dispersed customers diversified across numerous industries. We believe that our accounts receivable credit risk exposure is limited. As of September 30, 2021, there was one customer with an accounts receivable balance greater than 10% of our accounts receivable. As of December 31, 2020, no customer had an accounts receivable balance greater than 10% of our accounts receivable. We believe that at September 30, 2021, the concentration of credit risk related to accounts receivable was insignificant.

Our management, with the participation of our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer (our principal executive officer and principal financial officer, respectively), evaluated the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures as of September 30, 2021. The term “disclosure controls and procedures,” as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, means controls and other procedures of a company that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules and forms. Disclosure controls and procedures include, without limitation, controls and procedures designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to the company’s management, including its principal executive and principal financial officers, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosures. Management recognizes that any controls and procedures, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable assurance of achieving their objectives, and management necessarily applies its judgment in evaluating the cost-benefit relationship of possible controls and procedures. Based on the evaluation of our disclosure controls and procedures as of September 30, 2021, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that, as of such date, our disclosure controls and procedures were effective at the reasonable assurance level.

No change in our internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Exchange Act) occurred during the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2021 that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

PART II. OTHER INFORMATION

**Item 1.**Legal Proceedings

We are party to litigation that we consider routine and incidental to our business. We do not currently expect the results of any of these litigation matters to have a material effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition or cash flows.

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The following are important factors that could cause our actual operating results to differ materially from those indicated or suggested by forward-looking statements made in this quarterly report on Form 10-Q or presented elsewhere by management from time to time.

Financial and Operational Risks

We may face slowing revenue growth which could negatively impact our profitability and stock price.

The revenue growth rate we have enjoyed in recent years may not continue in future periods and could decline, which could negatively impact our profitability and stock price. Our revenue depends on the amount of traffic we deliver, continued growth in demand for our performance and security solutions and our ability to maintain the prices we charge for them.

We experienced a significant increase in revenue from our media solutions in 2020 due in large part to greater consumption of online media and games during the COVID-19 pandemic and associated stay-at-home orders across the globe. Numerous other factors impact our traffic growth including:

• the pace of introduction of OTT video delivery initiatives by our customers;

• the popularity of our customers’ streaming offerings as compared to those offered by companies that do not use our solutions;

• variation in the popularity of online gaming;

• media and other customers utilizing their own data centers and implementing delivery approaches that limit or eliminate reliance on third-party providers like us; and

• general macro-economic and geopolitical conditions and industry pressures.

We saw the rate of growth in traffic levels on our network begin to stabilize in the fourth quarter of 2020. Accordingly, we do not expect overall annual traffic growth in 2021 to continue at the same levels we saw in 2020 absent other significant industry developments.

We have experienced significant growth in revenue from our security solutions in recent years. To maintain or accelerate growth in security revenue, we must increase our industry recognition as a security solutions provider and develop or acquire new solutions in a rapidly-changing environment where security threats are constantly evolving. We must also ensure that our solutions operate effectively and are competitive with products offered by others.

We have experienced revenue declines in recent quarters from our web performance solutions and expect this trend to continue because of increasing pricing pressure due to competition and business conditions affecting many of our customers. In 2020, many of these customers faced significant disruptions to their business as a result of the international public health emergency associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic fallout from the pandemic has continued into 2021, and could have consequences across many industries, including additional bankruptcies, continued reductions in technology spending and economic recession. Any of these circumstances would negatively impact our revenues.

Our ability to increase our overall revenue also depends on many other factors including how well we can:

• retain existing customers, including by maintaining the levels of existing services they buy and by delivering consistent and quality performance levels;

• upsell new solutions to existing customers;

• expand our customer base;

• develop and sell innovative and appealing new solutions;

• address potential commoditization of our delivery-based solutions, which can lead to lower prices and loss of customers to competitors;

• counteract multi-vendor policies that could cause customers to reduce their reliance on us;

• handle other competitive threats to our business;

• adapt to changes in our customer contracting models from a committed revenue structure to a "pay-as-you-go" approach, which would make it easier for customers to stop doing business with us, or from traditional overage billing models to ones that do not incorporate surcharges for usage above committed levels; and

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• manage the impact of changes in general economic conditions, public health issues, natural disasters and public unrest on our ability to sell, market and provide our solutions.

If we are unable to increase revenues, our profitability and stock price could suffer.

Failure to control expenses could reduce our profitability, which would negatively impact our stock price.

Maintaining or improving our profitability depends both on our ability to increase our revenue, even with the potential challenges discussed above, and limit our expenses. We base our decisions about expense levels and investments on estimates of our future revenue and future anticipated rate of growth; however, many of our expenses are fixed cost in nature for some minimum amount of time so it may not be possible to reduce costs in a timely manner or without incurring fees to exit certain obligations early. If we are unable to increase revenue through traffic growth or otherwise and limit expenses, our results of operations will suffer. If we are required to significantly reduce expenses to maintain or improve profitability, such actions may negatively affect our ability to invest in our business for innovation, systems improvement and other initiatives.

If we do not develop or acquire new solutions that are attractive to enterprises, our revenue and operating results could be adversely affected.

Innovation is important to our future success. In particular, as security solutions have become, and are expected to continue to be, an increasingly important part of our business, we must be particularly adept at developing new security services that meet the constantly-changing threat landscape. The process of developing new solutions is complex, lengthy and uncertain; we must commit significant resources to developing new services or features without knowing whether our investments will result in solutions the market will accept, and we may choose to invest in business areas for which a viable market for our products does not ultimately develop. This could cause our expenses to grow more rapidly than our revenue. Trying to innovate through acquisition can be costly and with uncertain prospects for success; we may find that attractive acquisition targets are too expensive for us to pursue which could cause us to pursue more time-consuming internal development. Continuing restrictions on the ability, or vaccine or other mandates that result in the inability, of our developers and other employees to work in our facilities as a result of restrictions imposed by governments to combat the COVID-19 pandemic could reduce their effectiveness including, for example, by making it more difficult for them to collaborate as effectively in the development of new solutions. Failure to develop, on a cost-effective basis, innovative new or enhanced solutions that are attractive to customers and profitable to us could have a material detrimental effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.

If we are unable to compete effectively and adapt to changing market conditions, our business will be adversely affected.

We compete in markets that are intensely competitive and rapidly changing. Our current and potential competitors vary by size, product offerings and geographic region, and range from start-ups that offer solutions competing with a discrete part of our business to large technology or telecommunications companies that offer, or may be planning to introduce, products and services that are broadly competitive with what we do. The primary competitive factors in our market are differentiation of technology, global presence, quality of solutions, customer service, technical expertise, security, ease-of-use, breadth of services offered, price and financial strength.

Many of our current and potential competitors have substantiall

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Attached as Exhibit 101 to this report are the following formatted in XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language): (i) Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets at September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, (ii) Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, (iii) Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, (iv) Condensed Consolidated Statements of Stockholders' Equity for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, (v) Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020 and (vi) Notes to Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements.

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SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.