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Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), the intelligent edge platform for securing and delivering digital experiences, today announces the company has entered into an agreement to acquire Janrain, the company that pioneered the customer identity access management (CIAM) category. Janrain enables enterprises to enhance digital trust by offloading login and registration workloads, and its integration with Akamai’s Intelligent Edge Platform is expected to provide world class security, regulatory compliance and massive scale to online engagements.
As enterprises continue to adopt cloud technologies and digitize their businesses, web security and identity awareness have become increasingly integral to keeping businesses safe and secure and establishing digital trust. Akamai already secures its customers’ websites, apps and APIs from DDoS attacks, application vulnerabilities, bots and other advanced threats, with hundreds of millions of login transactions taking place daily on the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform. The acquisition is expected to add critical complementary capability that will help Akamai's customers establish and maintain digital trust with their users by providing a highly secure and resilient environment for collecting and storing sensitive user information, managing privacy controls, defending against identity fraud, and improving engagement and brand loyalty.
"It is challenging to conduct business online without an inherent and expected level of digital trust," said Rick McConnell, president of Akamai Technologies and general manager of Akamai’s web division. "Janrain’s Identity Cloud, working together with Akamai’s Intelligent Edge Platform, will provide an added layer of security to allow our customers to know more about their end users and potentially drive additional revenues from that deepened relationship."
Integrating Janrain’s Identity Cloud into the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform is expected to provide immediate security benefits to CIAM customers in two critical areas: bot management and threat intelligence. Akamai Bot Manager mitigates the risks associated with credential abuse by detecting and managing bot activity at login and registration time and reducing fraud without negatively impacting the user experience. By leveraging Akamai threat intelligence, customers can make smart decisions about which users should be allowed to access registration and login pages based on reputation built on past online behavior.
The integrated technology will also be designed to enable highly accurate, scalable, and secure risk-based adaptive authentication solutions to safeguard against malicious account activities including fraudulent account creation and credential compromise.
Janrain has been focused on creating an innovative solution for establishing digital trust through authentication and authorization for each individual consumer and even connected devices that interact with a digital enterprise," said Jim Kaskade, chief executive officer, Janrain. "By combining the scale and intelligence of Akamai’s Intelligent Edge Platform with Janrain's Identity Cloud, we believe we can realize the promise of delivering a more accurate and sophisticated customer identity management solution and enable trusted digital experiences that are unique for every user."
Janrain is a privately-funded company headquartered in Portland, Oregon. The all-cash transaction is expected to close early in the first quarter of 2019. Akamai anticipates the Janrain acquisition to be slightly dilutive to its non-GAAP net income per share for 2019, in the range of $0.05 to $0.06, and to become accretive in 2020. The acquisition is not expected to impact Akamai’s previously-stated goal of achieving a non-GAAP operating margin of 30% by 2020.
Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures
In addition to providing financial measurements based on generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America (GAAP), Akamai provides additional financial metrics that are not prepared in accordance with GAAP (non-GAAP). Management uses non-GAAP financial measures, in addition to GAAP financial measures, to understand and compare operating results across accounting periods, for financial and operational decision making, for planning and forecasting purposes, to measure executive compensation and to evaluate Akamai's financial performance. The non-GAAP financial measures used in this release are non-GAAP operating margin and non-GAAP net income per share.
Management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures reflect Akamai's ongoing business in a manner that allows for meaningful comparisons and analysis of trends in the business, as they facilitate comparing financial results across accounting periods and to those of peer companies. Management also believes that these non-GAAP financial measures enable investors to evaluate Akamai's operating results and future prospects in the same manner as management. These non-GAAP financial measures may exclude expenses and gains that may be unusual in nature, infrequent or not reflective of Akamai's ongoing operating results.
The non-GAAP financial measures do not replace the presentation of Akamai's GAAP financial results and should only be used as a supplement to, not as a substitute for, Akamai's financial results presented in accordance with GAAP. Akamai has provided a reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure used in its financial reporting and investor presentations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure. This reconciliation captioned “Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Financial Measures” can be found on the Investor Relations section of Akamai's website.
Akamai provides forward-looking statements in the form of guidance and other expressions of expectations about future performance. These forward-looking projections are provided on a non-GAAP basis and cannot be reconciled to the closest GAAP measure without unreasonable effort because of the unpredictability of the amounts and timing of events affecting the items we exclude from non-GAAP measures. For example, stock-based compensation is unpredictable for Akamai’s performance-based awards, which can fluctuate significantly based on current expectations of future achievement of performance-based targets. Amortization of intangible assets, acquisition-related costs and restructuring costs are all impacted by the timing and size of potential future actions, which are difficult to predict. In addition, from time to time, Akamai excludes certain items that occur infrequently, which are also inherently difficult to predict and estimate. It is also difficult to predict the tax effect of the items we exclude and to estimate certain discrete tax items, like the resolution of tax audits or changes to tax laws. As such, the costs that are being excluded from non-GAAP projections are difficult to predict and a reconciliation or a range of results could lead to disclosure that would be imprecise or potentially misleading. Material changes to any one of the exclusions could have a significant effect on our guidance and future GAAP results.
Akamai’s definitions of non-GAAP measures used in this press release are outlined below:
Non-GAAP income from operations – GAAP income from operations adjusted for the following items: amortization of acquired intangible assets; stock-based compensation; amortization of capitalized stock-based compensation; amortization of capitalized interest expense; acquisition-related costs; restructuring charges; benefit from adoption of software development activities; gains and other activity related to divestiture of a business; gains and losses on legal settlements; costs from professional service providers related to a non-routine stockholder matter; costs incurred related to the establishment of an endowment to the Akamai Foundation; costs incurred with respect to Akamai's internal FCPA investigation; transformation costs; and other non-recurring or unusual items that may arise from time to time.
Non-GAAP operating margin – Non-GAAP income from operations stated as a percentage of revenue.
Non-GAAP net income – GAAP net income adjusted for the following tax-affected items: amortization of acquired intangible assets; stock-based compensation; amortization of capitalized stock-based compensation; acquisition-related costs; restructuring charges; benefit from adoption of software development activities; gains and other activity related to divestiture of a business; gains and losses on legal settlements; costs from professional service providers related to a non-routine stockholder matter; costs incurred related to the establishment of an endowment to the Akamai Foundation; costs incurred with respect to Akamai's internal FCPA investigation; transformation costs; loss on early extinguishment of debt; amortization of debt discount and issuance costs; amortization of capitalized interest expense; certain gains and losses on investments; and other non-recurring or unusual items that may arise from time to time
Non-GAAP net income per share – Non-GAAP net income divided by basic weighted average or diluted common shares outstanding. Basic weighted average shares outstanding are those used in GAAP net income per share calculations. Diluted weighted average shares outstanding are adjusted in non-GAAP per share calculations for the shares that would be delivered to Akamai pursuant to the note hedge transaction entered into in connection with the issuance of $1,150 million of convertible senior notes due 2025 and $690 million of convertible senior notes due 2019. Under GAAP, shares delivered under hedge transactions are not considered offsetting shares in the fully-diluted share calculation until they are delivered. However, the company would receive a benefit from the note hedge transaction and would not allow the dilution to occur, so management believes that adjusting for this benefit provides a meaningful view of operating performance. With respect to the convertible senior notes due 2025, unless and until Akamai's weighted average stock price is greater than $95.10, the initial conversion price, and with respect to the convertible senior notes due 2019, unless and until Akamai's weighted average stock price is greater than $89.56, the initial conversion price, there will be no difference between GAAP and non-GAAP diluted weighted average common shares outstanding.
The non-GAAP adjustments, and Akamai's basis for excluding them from non-GAAP financial measures, are outlined below:
- Amortization of acquired intangible assets – Akamai has incurred amortization of intangible assets, included in its GAAP financial statements, related to various acquisitions Akamai has made. The amount of an acquisition's purchase price allocated to intangible assets and term of its related amortization can vary significantly and are unique to each acquisition; therefore, Akamai excludes amortization of acquired intangible assets from its non-GAAP financial measures to provide investors with a consistent basis for comparing pre- and post-acquisition operating results.
- Stock-based compensation and amortization of capitalized stock-based compensation – Although stock-based compensation is an important aspect of the compensation paid to Akamai's employees, the grant date fair value varies based on the stock price at the time of grant, varying valuation methodologies, subjective assumptions and the variety of award types. This makes the comparison of Akamai's current financial results to previous and future periods difficult to interpret; therefore, Akamai believes it is useful to exclude stock-based compensation and amortization of capitalized stock-based compensation from its non-GAAP financial measures in order to highlight the performance of Akamai's core business and to be consistent with the way many investors evaluate its performance and compare its operating results to peer companies.
- Acquisition-related costs – Acquisition-related costs include transaction fees, advisory fees, due diligence costs and other direct costs associated with strategic activities. In addition, subsequent adjustments to Akamai's initial estimated amounts of contingent consideration and indemnification associated with specific acquisitions are included within acquisition-related costs. These amounts are impacted by the timing and size of the acquisitions. Akamai excludes acquisition-related costs from its non-GAAP financial measures to provide a useful comparison of Akamai's operating results to prior periods and to its peer companies because such amounts vary significantly based on the magnitude of the acquisition transactions and do not reflect Akamai's core operations.
- Restructuring charges – Akamai has incurred restructuring charges that are included in its GAAP financial statements, primarily related to workforce reductions and estimated costs of existing facility lease commitments. Akamai excludes these items from its non-GAAP financial measures when evaluating its continuing business performance as such items vary significantly based on the magnitude of the restructuring action and do not reflect expected future operating expenses. In addition, these charges do not necessarily provide meaningful insight into the fundamentals of current or past operations of its business.
- Amortization of debt discount and issuance costs and amortization of capitalized interest expense – In May 2018, Akamai issued $1,150 million of convertible senior notes due 2025 with a coupon interest rate of 0.125%. In February 2014, Akamai issued $690 million of convertible senior notes due 2019 with a coupon interest rate of 0%. The imputed interest rates of these convertible senior notes were 4.26% and 3.20%, respectively. This is a result of the debt discounts recorded for the conversion features that are required to be separately accounted for as equity under GAAP, thereby reducing the carrying value of the convertible debt instruments. The debt discounts are amortized as interest expense together with the issuance costs of the debt. The interest expense excluded from Akamai's non-GAAP results is comprised of these non-cash components and is excluded from management's assessment of the company's operating performance because management believes the non-cash expense is not representative of ongoing operating performance.
- Gains and losses on investments – Akamai has recorded gains and losses from the disposition, changes to fair value and impairment of certain investments. Akamai believes excluding these amounts from its non-GAAP financial measures is useful to investors as the types of events giving rise to them are not representative of Akamai's core business operations and ongoing operating performance.
- Legal and stockholder matter costs – Akamai has incurred losses related to the settlement of legal matters, costs from professional service providers related to a non-routine stockholder matter and costs with respect to its internal U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA") investigation. Akamai believes excluding these amounts from its non-GAAP financial measures is useful to investors as the types of events giving rise to them are not representative of Akamai's core business operations.
- Endowment of Akamai Foundation – During the second quarter of 2018, Akamai incurred a charge to endow the Akamai Foundation. Akamai believes excluding these amounts from non-GAAP financial measures is useful to investors as this one-time expense is not representative of its core business operations.
- Transformation costs – Akamai has incurred professional services fees associated with internal transformation programs designed to improve its operating margins and that are part of a planned program intended to significantly change the manner in which business is conducted. Akamai believes excluding these amounts from its non-GAAP financial measures is useful to investors as the types of events and activities giving rise to them occur infrequently and are not representative of Akamai's core business operations and ongoing operating performance.
- Income tax effect of non-GAAP adjustments and certain discrete tax items – The non-GAAP adjustments described above are reported on a pre-tax basis. The income tax effect of non-GAAP adjustments is the difference between GAAP and non-GAAP income tax expense. Non-GAAP income tax expense is computed on non-GAAP pre-tax income (GAAP pre-tax income adjusted for non-GAAP adjustments) and excludes certain discrete tax items (such as recording or releasing of valuation allowances), if any. Akamai believes that applying the non GAAP adjustments and their related income tax effect allows Akamai to highlight income attributable to its core operations.
The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about expected benefits to Akamai from the acquisition. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, failure to close the transaction expeditiously or at all, inability to successfully integrate the technology and personnel of Janrain, failure to achieve expected post-closing financial results, failure to provide expected benefits of combined technologies, and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.
About Akamai
Akamai is the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online. Our market-leading security solutions, superior threat intelligence, and global operations team provide defense-in-depth to safeguard enterprise data and applications everywhere. Akamai’s full-stack cloud computing solutions deliver performance and affordability on the world’s most distributed platform. Global enterprises trust Akamai to provide the industry-leading reliability, scale, and expertise they need to grow their business with confidence. Learn more at akamai.com and akamai.com/blog, or follow Akamai Technologies on X and LinkedIn.