Also mal wieder "NUR" im Rahmen der Erwartungen
Fifth Consecutive Quarterly Profit
John McAdam, who joined F5 Networks as president and chief executive officer in July, said the company's growth and profitability are
indicators of a broad, expanding market for products and services that enable a wide variety of enterprises to optimize the flow of
traffic and manage content efficiently on their networks. "While many companies offer competing products that represent a wide range
of functions and performance characteristics, F5 has claimed the lead in delivering intelligent, high-performance controllers capable of
making complex decisions about where to route individual service requests for optimal network performance. In addition, recent
benchmarks have shown that our products can make those complex decisions three to four times faster than competing products.
"As the Internet continues to thread its way into every aspect of our lives, exponential growth in network traffic and the kinds of files
and applications accessed on the Internet are compelling network managers to deploy intelligent and effective traffic and content
management solutions to limit the need for more expensive servers and to keep their existing networks from bogging down. With our
aggressive product roadmap and our knowledge of network infrastructure, we believe F5 is positioned to be the premier provider of
products and services for this rapidly growing market. Our challenge in the coming year is to deliver superior technology at a price
point that will enable us to dramatically expand our market share. The introduction of our EDGE-FX(TM) Cache Server, which began
shipping in mid-September and generated just under a million dollars in sales during the fourth quarter, was a major step in that
direction. During fiscal 2001, we will continue to broaden our market opportunity in traffic management by adding port density to our
BIG-IP(R) product line."
McAdam said the company's aggressive pursuit of market share is calculated to accelerate revenue growth during fiscal 2001, but will
likely not impact the rate of earnings growth as investments in channels and technology put pressure on operating margins. "Our
target for the first quarter of fiscal 2001 is revenue in the range of $41 million to $43 million with earnings in the range of $0.16 to
$0.18 per diluted share. For fiscal 2001, our target is to achieve $200 million in revenue with earnings in the range of $0.85 to $0.90
per diluted share."