F5's Growth Is Far From Over
The firm's strategy and market opportunities support our $100 per share fair value estimate and narrow moat rating.
The firm's strategy and market opportunities support our $100 per share fair value estimate and narrow moat rating.
Server virtualization, mobile computing, and data center consolidation have led to rapid data traffic growth and increased network complexity, and F5 Networks (FFIV) has been a primary beneficiary of these secular trends. The firm's core products--application delivery controllers, or ADCs, which direct data traffic to and from web and application servers--have become key components in data center environments. F5 has steadily gained market share, largely at Cisco's (CSCO) expense, and the firm now enjoys roughly 50% market share.
We believe the application delivery controller market will continue to grow, and we expect F5's revenue to grow faster than the overall market as it continues to gain share and drive incremental services revenue. F5 is also well positioned to gain share in the $6.5 billion network security market, and we expect product revenue growth to accelerate throughout 2013.
Michael Hodel does not own (actual or beneficial) shares in any of the securities mentioned above. Find out about Morningstar’s editorial policies.