Shares in F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) leapt 11% higher after the multi-cloud management specialist said that it enjoyed a record quarter of revenue growth thanks to trends for "hybrid multicloud" and artificial intelligence.
Hybrid multicloud refers to a cloud computing environment where technologies are used to manage and secure applications across a combination of public cloud providers like AWS and Azure, and an organization's own on-premises infrastructure.
Revenues for the past quarter, the first of F5's fiscal year, of $766 million were up 11% on the previous year.
Software revenue of $209 million was up 22% and systems revenue increased 18% to $160 million, with global services revenue growing 3% to $398 million.
"F5’s alignment with significant secular trends, a more stable IT spending environment, and our strong execution led to another record quarter,” said CEO François Locoh-Donou.
"We are seeing new opportunities emerge in two main areas: hybrid multicloud and AI."
He said F5’s technology "means we can simplify the crushing complexity of these environments in ways competitors cannot", which was leading to more potential clients being interested.
F5's "unique ability to rapidly and securely move the large amounts of enterprise data necessary for AI inferencing and retrieval augmented generation positions F5 as a crucial player as businesses start to implement AI on a large scale".