Akamai sees Q4 revenue beating estimates on AI, CDN demand

Akamai Technologies, Inc., reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2025.

“Akamai delivered a strong quarter, with solid top-line performance and excellent bottom-line results – highlighted by outperformance on margins and significant year-over-year EPS growth. We were particularly pleased by the continued success of our high-growth security products and the momentum in Cloud Infrastructure Services, where revenue growth accelerated to 39% year-over-year,” said Dr. Tom Leighton, Akamai’s Chief Executive Officer. “We are also excited by the interest in our newly launched Akamai Inference Cloud, which is powered by NVIDIA AI infrastructure and engineered to enable secure, low-latency performance for AI at the edge. By moving AI inference from the core to the edge, we are unlocking a new generation of applications that can sense, reason and act in real-time.”

Akamai delivered the following results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2025:

Revenue: Revenue was $1.055 billion, a 5% increase over third quarter 2024 revenue of $1.005 billion and a 4% increase when adjusted for foreign exchange.*

Revenue by solution:

• Security revenue was $568 million, up 10% year-over-year and up 9% when adjusted for foreign exchange
• Delivery revenue was $306 million, down 4% year-over-year and when adjusted for foreign exchange
• Cloud computing revenue was $180 million, up 8% year-over-year and up 7% when adjusted for foreign exchange
• Cloud Infrastructure Services** revenue of $81 million, up 39% year-over-year and when adjusted for foreign exchange

Revenue by geography:

• U.S. revenue was $530 million, up 1% year-over-year
• International revenue was $525 million, up 9% year-over-year and up 8% when adjusted for foreign exchange

Third quarter 2024 item: Third quarter year-over-year growth rates for GAAP income from operations, GAAP net income and GAAP EPS in the paragraphs below were impacted by an $82 million restructuring charge recognized in the third quarter of 2024, which did not recur in the third quarter of 2025.

Income from operations: GAAP income from operations was $166 million, a 135% increase from third quarter 2024. GAAP operating margin for the third quarter was 16%, up 9 percentage points from the same period last year.

Non-GAAP income from operations* was $322 million, a 9% increase from third quarter 2024. Non-GAAP operating margin* for the third quarter was 31%, up 2 percentage points from the same period last year.

Net income: GAAP net income was $140 million, a 142% increase from third quarter 2024. Non-GAAP net income* was $269 million, up 10% from third quarter 2024.

EPS: GAAP net income per diluted share was $0.97, a 155% increase from third quarter 2024 and a 156% increase when adjusted for foreign exchange.* Non-GAAP net income per diluted share* was $1.86, a 17% increase from third quarter 2024 and when adjusted for foreign exchange.*

Adjusted EBITDA*: Adjusted EBITDA* was $458 million, an 8% increase from third quarter 2024.

Supplemental cash information: Cash from operations for the third quarter of 2025 was $442 million, or 42% of revenue. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities was $1.813 billion as of September 30, 2025.

Share repurchases: The Company did not repurchase shares of its common stock in the third quarter of 2025. The Company spent $800 million during the nine months ended September 30, 2025 to repurchase 10.0 million shares of common stock at a weighted average price of $79.77 per share. The Company had 144 million shares of common stock outstanding as of September 30, 2025.

Financial guidance:

The Company reports the following financial guidance for the fourth quarter and full year 2025:

The guidance that is provided on a non-GAAP basis cannot be reconciled to the closest GAAP measures without unreasonable effort because of the unpredictability of the amounts and timing of events affecting the items Akamai excludes 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 the 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 Akamai excludes and to estimate certain discrete tax items, such as the resolution of tax audits or changes to tax laws. As such, the costs that are being excluded from non-GAAP guidance 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.

CT Bureau