Fortinet revenue and profits rose sharply for its first quarter of 2011, attributed to regulatory compliance mandates and market trends of technology consolidation that drove sales of the company's Unified Threat Management products.
Fortinet's revenue totaled $93.3 million during its first quarter, up 34 percent compared with $69.8 million in revenue in the year-ago period. The company's income totaled $13.6 million, up from $4.2 million in the first quarter 2010.
In general, Fortinet executives said that they were pleased with the robust 2011 first quarter results.
"It was a very solid quarter, exceeding expectations in all of our key financial metrics," said Ken Goldman, Fortinet chief financial officer, during a conference call Wednesday. "The momentum increased as our position unfolded and we feel very well positioned for the year."
Fortinet's product revenue rshowed a 48 percent increase to $40 million from $27 million in the first quarter 2010. Executives attributed the strong growth to market trends of technology consolidation and customer's overall gravitation to UTM -- a niche that Fortinet readily fills with its wide range of FortiGate UTM products.
"Reinforcing our competitive edge, overall spending in the global UTM market continues to improve," Goldman said. "And results show that type of momentum has continued into 2011."
The company's services business also gained traction with a 26 percent year-over-year increase to $49 million from $39 million.
Executives said that the company continued to gain ground in key vertical markets, such as health care and financial services, while sales in the retail sector remained strong, attributed in part to increasingly stringent compliance regulations such as PCI DSS, Goldman said.
Goldman said that the company continued to make strong inroads with large enterprise customers, landing 111 deals each totaling more than $100,000, with 18 of those deals surpassing $500,000, compared to eight such deals in 2010.
