Fastly, Inc. (FSLY) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript
Access earnings results, analyst expectations, report, slides, earnings call, and transcript.
Overview
The earnings call presents a positive outlook with raised guidance for revenue and operating profit, and improved free cash flow. The Q&A section highlights strong AI and security product growth, strategic customer engagements, and a robust guidance process. Despite some concerns about geopolitical risks and unclear details on certain metrics, the overall sentiment is optimistic. The market cap indicates a potential stock price reaction in the positive range (2% to 8%) given the company's strategic advancements and financial guidance.
Key Financial Performance
Revenue Record revenue of $173 million in Q4 2025, representing 23% annual growth, the highest in over 3 years. This growth was driven by strong event performance, larger customers prioritizing network stability, and successful upsell and cross-sell motions.
Gross Margin Record gross margin of 64% in Q4 2025, up 650 basis points from 57.5% in Q4 2024. This improvement was due to a stronger balanced traffic mix and cost discipline.
Operating Margin Operating margin expanded to 12.3% in Q4 2025, up 500 basis points sequentially from 7.3% in Q3 2025. This was driven by revenue growth and cost management.
Free Cash Flow Positive free cash flow of $8.6 million in Q4 2025, a $16.5 million increase from negative $7.9 million in Q4 2024. This improvement was due to revenue outperformance and cost discipline.
Network Services Revenue $130.8 million in Q4 2025, a 19% year-over-year growth. This was attributed to healthy traffic levels and successful upsell motions.
Security Revenue $35.4 million in Q4 2025, a 32% year-over-year growth. This was driven by the expansion of the security portfolio and cross-sell success.
Other Products Revenue $6.4 million in Q4 2025, a 78% year-over-year growth. This growth was primarily driven by sales of compute products.
Net Retention Rate (NRR) 110% in Q4 2025, up from 106% in Q3 2025 and 102% in Q4 2024. This increase was due to revenue growth from larger customers.
Annual Revenue Retention Rate 98.7% for 2025, a slight decline from 99.0% in 2024. This metric is being phased out as it is less indicative of business health.
Adjusted EBITDA $35 million in Q4 2025, up from $11.1 million in Q4 2024. This increase was driven by revenue growth and cost management.
Cash Flow from Operations Positive $22.4 million in Q4 2025, up from $5.2 million in Q4 2024. This improvement was due to revenue growth and cost discipline.
Annual Revenue $624 million for 2025, a 15% growth over 2024. This exceeded the original guidance range of $535 million to $585 million due to balanced performance across customer mix and product platform.
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Operating Highlights
Security revenue growth: Accelerated to 32% year-over-year, up from 30% in the third quarter, marking another record high. New security products and a comprehensive suite aligned with customer requirements contributed to this growth.
API Inventory: Launched in Q4, enabling customers to review, catalog, and manage APIs for optimization and incident response. Builds upon API Discovery launched in Q3 2025.
AI Assistant (Beta): Introduced as a context-aware, in-console feature to accelerate platform adoption by enterprise software engineering teams with step-by-step guidance and personalized recommendations.
Network services growth: Grew 19% year-over-year, outpacing market growth due to stronger event performance and larger customers prioritizing network stability, performance, and resilience.
Geographic and customer segment growth: Balanced revenue growth across product lines, geographic regions, and customer segments in 2025, positioning for continued growth in 2026.
Revenue growth: Achieved record revenue of $173 million in Q4, a 23% annual growth, marking the highest in over three years.
Gross margin improvement: Reached a record 64% in Q4, demonstrating operational efficiency and leverage.
Free cash flow: Positive for the fourth consecutive quarter, with $8.6 million in Q4 and $45.8 million for the full year 2025.
Focus on AI and edge intelligence: Positioned to capitalize on the transition to agentic AI, with infrastructure designed to optimize AI agents and block abuse.
Go-to-market strategy: Focused on accelerating customer acquisition, upsell, and cross-sell engagement, particularly in performance and resiliency.
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Risk or Challenges
Macroeconomic and Geopolitical Uncertainty: The company acknowledges greater macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, which could impact longer-term visibility and growth projections.
Supply Chain Constraints: The company is closely monitoring supply chain dynamics, particularly regarding memory components, and has taken strategic actions to mitigate potential impacts. However, supply chain constraints remain a risk.
Revenue Variability: The company's revenue model is based on customer consumption, which can lead to variability in quarterly results and poses a challenge for consistent financial forecasting.
Increased Capital Expenditures: The company anticipates a significant increase in infrastructure capital expenditures in 2026, which could strain financial resources if not managed effectively.
Customer Concentration: The top 10 customers represent 34% of revenue, indicating a reliance on a small group of customers, which could pose risks if any of these customers reduce their spending.
Regulatory Risks: The company mentioned ByteDance's restructuring to continue operating in the U.S., indicating potential regulatory risks that could impact revenue from specific customers.
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Guidance & Outlook
Revenue Growth: For Q1 2026, revenue is expected to range between $168 million and $174 million, representing 18% annual growth at the midpoint. For the full year 2026, revenue is projected to be between $700 million and $720 million, reflecting 14% annual growth at the midpoint.
Gross Margins: Gross margins for Q1 2026 are anticipated to be 64%, plus or minus 50 basis points. For the full year 2026, gross margins are expected to be 63%, plus or minus 50 basis points.
Operating Profit: Non-GAAP operating profit for Q1 2026 is expected to range between $14 million and $18 million. For the full year 2026, operating profit is projected to be between $50 million and $60 million, reflecting an operating margin of 8% at the midpoint.
Net Earnings Per Share: Non-GAAP net earnings per diluted share for Q1 2026 are expected to range between $0.07 and $0.10. For the full year 2026, net earnings per diluted share are projected to be between $0.23 and $0.29.
Free Cash Flow: Free cash flow for 2026 is expected to range between $40 million and $50 million.
Capital Expenditures: Infrastructure capital expenditures for 2026 are anticipated to be in the range of 10% to 12% of revenue, with spending front-loaded to address supply chain constraints and growth objectives.
Market Position and Growth: The company expects to outpace market growth in 2026, driven by strong go-to-market execution, product portfolio expansion, and fiscal discipline. AI-related opportunities are seen as a tailwind for growth.
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Shareholder Return Plan
The selected topic was not discussed during the call.
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Key Q&A
Q:Can you expand on what you are seeing with agentic AI at the edge?
A:The company is seeing increased traffic related to agentic AI, including machine-to-machine interactions and AI tools checking multiple websites. This traffic is processed through the Fastly network. They have published a report with statistics on this. AI workloads on the platform include storing large training datasets and using compute at edge for inference. AI bot mitigation is also a focus, helping customers manage crawlers and harmful bots. AI is seen as a positive influence on the business.
Q:What drove the widening of the performance gap between Fastly and its peers?
A:Fastly has maintained a performance edge due to its focus on resiliency in its edge platform. Architectural steps have been taken to deliver a more resilient platform, which has attracted customer traffic.
Q:How concentrated is the 12-month RPO increase from Q3 to Q4 among the largest customers?
A:The RPO increase is broad-based across the customer base. The company has focused on encouraging revenue commitments from a variety of customers, including large enterprises, as part of its go-to-market strategy to manage volatility.
Q:What gives you confidence in the increased guidance for next year?
A:The company cites momentum from 2025, customer contracts, RPO numbers, market trends, and market share growth as reasons for confidence. However, they are cautious about geopolitical and macroeconomic dynamics and supply chain issues.
Q:Has there been a shift in traffic mix, such as away from traditional media towards AI traffic?
A:There is material cross-sell activity in large accounts, bringing in portfolios like security and compute. This transforms relationships with customers to be more strategic. Seasonal factors also influence the mix of media versus non-media traffic.
Q:What indications are you getting from customers about the growth rate of agentic AI adoption?
A:The company sees growth in agentic AI traffic through telemetry and customer conversations. Media customers are shifting from blocking AI to optimizing for it. Fastly has introduced AI bot mitigation technology and supports the RSL protocol for content rights agreements related to AI models.
Q:How much of the CapEx increase is due to higher component costs versus capacity addition?
A:The CapEx increase is due to both higher component costs (e.g., 25%-75% increases in memory prices) and the need for additional capacity to support growth.
Q:What are the durable inputs to traffic growth and the pricing trends?
A:Traffic growth is mid-20s, spread across different types. Price erosion has contracted to mid-single digits due to disciplined pricing and selling based on performance. Volume drives margins up due to economies of scale.
Q:How much of the security business momentum is tied to the network services business?
A:There is some coupling as customers consume both services, but the primary driver is the expansion of the security portfolio. Security-first customers are being landed and expanded into network services.
Q:What is the balance of growth between security and network services in the 2026 guidance?
A:Both security and network services are expected to grow faster than the market. Growth is broad-based across both segments.
Q:What is your guidance philosophy and process?
A:The company uses a robust planning process, including customer-by-customer analysis, macro environment considerations, and stress testing. The goal is to provide transparent and risk-adjusted guidance.
Q:What is the current penetration of newer security products like DDoS and bot management?
A:The majority of security revenue comes from the WAF product, but there is traction with Bot Management and API Security. Some of the largest new deals are on API use cases.
Q:What is the role of API capabilities in the evolving traffic landscape with agentic AI?
A:The security portfolio is designed with AI workloads in mind, addressing both AI and traditional API needs. The company is about halfway through its journey in building out API capabilities and plans to expand further.
Q:What portion of CapEx is for maintenance versus growth?
A:The majority of CapEx is for growth, including opening additional POPs in regions like APJ, rather than maintenance.
Q:What is the expected percentage of revenue from the top 10 customers in 2026?
A:The top 10 customers currently account for 34% of revenue, up from 32%. This percentage is expected to remain in the low to mid-30s.
Q:How will gross margins trend throughout the year?
A:Gross margins are expected to be higher in Q1 and Q4, with a drop in Q2 and Q3 due to additional costs from new POPs coming online.
Q:Review of Unclear Management Responses
A:Management avoided providing specific details on the concentration of RPO increases among the largest customers, the exact breakdown of CapEx between maintenance and growth, and the penetration rates of newer security products. Additionally, while they discussed the impact of geopolitical and macroeconomic factors on guidance, the responses lacked specific data or examples.
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Earnings Word Cloud
The most frequently occurring keywords in this quarter's earning call
AI Assistant
AI agent
AI edge
AI tailwind
AI traffic
API Discovery
API Inventory
API Protection
API inventory
API security
API suite
APIs ownership
Agentic AI
Application API
Assistant Beta
Award Cloud
Beta context
Bot Compute
CEO month
Fortune
alert
cloud
control platform
feature
high
incident response
launch
platform adoption
provider
reality
resilience
security requirement
step
use platform
vision
workload
FSLY Transcript
Fastly, Inc. (FSLY) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript
Positive2-11
The earnings call presents a positive outlook with raised guidance for revenue and operating profit, and improved free cash flow. The Q&A section highlights strong AI and security product growth, strategic customer engagements, and a robust guidance process. Despite some concerns about geopolitical risks and unclear details on certain metrics, the overall sentiment is optimistic. The market cap indicates a potential stock price reaction in the positive range (2% to 8%) given the company's strategic advancements and financial guidance.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where does this earnings call transcript come from?
All transcripts are sourced directly from the official live webcast or the company’s official investor relations website. We use the exact words spoken during the call with no paraphrasing of the core discussion.
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No material content is ever changed or summarized in the “Full Transcript” section. We only correct obvious spoken typos (e.g., “um”, “ah”, repeated 10 times”, or clear misspoken ticker symbols) and add speaker names/titles for readability. Every substantive sentence remains 100% as spoken.
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They are generated by a specialized financial-language model trained exclusively on 15+ years of earnings transcripts. The model extracts financial figures, guidance, and tone with 97%+ accuracy and is regularly validated against human analysts. The full raw transcript always remains available for verification.
