A10 Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ATEN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dhrupad Trivedi: Yes. Good question, Hamed. So first I would maybe differentiate, right? So our business is 50% in the Americas, 50% that were not in the Americas. The 50% not in the Americas is much more normalized already. The 50% in the Americas, where it typically relates to a large – large customer who could be a telco or a cable company, the nature of what we see is they have annual budget cycles, which reflects investments planned for the year and projects planned for the year typically around maintenance CapEx, capacity expansion CapEx and then new projects that they are funding to generate new sources of revenue. The nature of what we are seeing is as many of these companies themselves went through significant restructuring and cost adjustments in Q1 of this year and increasingly including today, right they continue to see cost of capital being a headwind.

What they are doing? So in security type of products more often we will see a rescaling, where they will do half of the project now and half of the project later if you will, but not cancel it because it’s critical in places where it was related to modernization. Those projects are generally pushed out six to nine months or more as in not critical to today’s revenue or today’s security. And I think in between the two is where our products are in line of customers generating revenue, we are seeing maybe push out in terms of their decision-making, where they have planned to spend something in June. Now they are saying they’re going to hold off till we review all our CapEx again and maybe it’s going to be July, right? So that’s again because it’s generating revenue for the customers, it’s deferred but not canceled.

So I don’t know if that gives you more color on Hamed.

Hamed Khorsand: That’s helpful. And are you seeing any of your customers reevaluate their security needs and maybe design you out or design you in based upon those? And how is that trend going?

Dhrupad Trivedi: I think that generally, the security spending category is not the same as one-off than IT spending categories right? Because security spending category also ties back into enterprise decisions and business operations risks and things like that. So, it’s not just about upgrading IT. It’s kind of a risk management as much as anything. So, as we see this environment I would say certainly the volume and complexity of attacks you keep hearing about in the press certainly increased their awareness and sensitivity to doing more things to make themselves secure. So, that trend is probably a tailwind for most security companies including for us. There’s — I don’t think there is a lot of churn in that market because our customer base generally is larger companies and they spend a lot of their own time effort and integration into using these products, right?

So, we don’t see a lot of churn in that context, but we certainly see demand reflecting their increasing concerns in terms of what they see in the news right about the types of organizations being attacked and what the impact is.

Hamed Khorsand: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you, Hamed. Our next question is from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti. Your line is now open.

Anja Soderstrom: Hi, thank you for taking my questions. So, congratulations on the good progress for the quarter. I’m just curious for what you see in terms of your customers and you said a lot of them have been going through restructuring themselves. And do you think that might have accelerated their digital transformation and their need for more services from you in terms of building that out for them?