Adds shares, details paragraph two onwards
Jan 27 - Cybersecurity firm F5 Inc FFIV.O raised its annual revenue and profit forecasts on Tuesday, signaling that its remediation efforts and the resilient demand for application security were helping it move past the impact of a recent systems breach.
Shares of the Seattle, Washington-based company, which gained over 1.5% in 2025, rose 11% in extended trading.
Enterprises have been accelerating cloud adoption and modernizing security operations amid rising threats from nation-state actors and increasingly sophisticated ransomware attacks.
F5, which provides software and products that help customers direct, manage and filter internet traffic, disclosed in October that hackers had long-term access to certain company systems, including one of its key cybersecurity service's source code.
Analysts expect concerns around a slowdown in customer activity with F5 to be overblown, with the headwinds largely confined to the first quarter. They expect the business to return to a normal pace of activity after that.
For fiscal 2026, F5 forecast revenue growth between 5% and 6%, ahead of its prior projection of growth of 0% to 4%.
It expects annual adjusted earnings between $15.65 and $16.05 per share, up from the earlier range of $14.50 to $15.50 apiece.
F5 projected second-quarter revenue in the range of $770 million to $790 million, compared with analysts' average estimate of $748.3 million, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Revenue for the first quarter ended December 31 grew 7% to $822.5 million, beating an estimate of $758.1 million.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Shreya Biswas)
((Juby.Babu@thomsonreuters.com))