Fortinet - Q2 2023
August 3, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fortinet Q2 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a Q&A session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Peter Salkowski, Senior Vice President of Finance.
Peter Salkowski (SVP of Finance and Investor Relations)
Thank you, Teresa. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Pete Salkowski, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations at Fortinet. I am pleased to welcome everyone to our call to discuss Fortinet's financial results for the second quarter of 2023. Speakers on today's call are Ken Xie, Fortinet's Founder, Chairman, and CEO, and Keith Jensen, our Chief Financial Officer. This is a live call that will be available for replay via webcast on the investor relations website. Ken will begin our call today by providing a high-level perspective of our business. Keith will review our financial and operating results for the second quarter of 2023 before providing guidance for the third quarter of 2023 and updating the full year. We'll open the call for questions.
During the Q&A session, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question to allow others to participate. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that on today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements, and these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Please refer to our SEC filings, in particular, the risk factors in our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q for more information. All forward-looking statements reflect the opinions only as of the date of this presentation, and we undertake no obligation and specifically disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements. Also, all references to financial metrics that we make today on today's call are non-GAAP unless stated otherwise.
Our GAAP results and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations are located in the earnings press release and in the presentation that accompanies today's remarks, both of which are posted on the investor relations website. Ken and Keith's prepared remarks for today's earnings call will be posted on the quarterly earnings section of our investor relations website immediately following today's call. Lastly, all references to growth are on a year-over-year basis, unless noted otherwise. I will now turn the call over to Ken.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Thanks, Peter. Thank you to everyone for joining to this call to review our second quarter 2023 results. Total revenue in the second quarter increased 26%, driven by strong revenue growth in service, which topped 30% for the second consecutive quarter, with 34% growth in secure subscription and a non-FortiGate product growth over 45%, which is nearly $2 billion annual run rate. Building growth of 18% leads to more normalized product revenue growth of 18%. We believe our building performance reflects large enterprise concern with the macro environment, in addition to some inventory digestion after two years of elevated 30%+ product building growth during the supply chain shortage.
According to IDC's latest quarterly security tracker, in addition to having the number one unit in firewall category for 10 consecutive years with over 50% market share, Fortinet is now the market share leader in both unit and revenue. Based on the latest Westlands Advisory OT Security and Cybersecurity Report, Fortinet was named the only IT, OT network protection platform leader. We are currently one of the top and the fastest-growing OT security vendor in the market, that Westlands Advisory expect to grow to $33 billion by 2030. Fortinet's success lies in our broad integrated platform, our proprietary ASIC security processor, and our ability to converge network and security, both on-prem and in the cloud, across a single FortiOS operating system.
To leverage these advantages and drive future growth, in addition to our leading network security solution, we are increasing our go-to-market investment in universal SASE, SD-WAN, OT security, cloud security, and security operations, and we will dedicate more resources to support hybrid infrastructure and hybrid work. Today, we announced a new FortiGate 90G, our first next-generation firewall and secure SD-WAN appliance with the new Security Processor 5 ASIC that deliver industry-leading security function, performance, scalability, and power efficiency, and a cost-effective price. The FortiGate 90G is fully integrated with our FortiGuard AI-powered security service and has secure computing routing that is up to 16x greater than average of a competitor's similar price model by using over 90% less power than competing solution.
We also announced two new SD-WAN service under the performance monitoring service to simplify operation and enhance digital experience, as well as overlay service to facilitate rapid deployment, redundancy, and seamless interconnection of location with FortiSASE using SPA technology. This new SD-WAN service showcase our commitment to expanding our service, leverage our leading installation base for additional future growth. We see a single vendor SASE solution opening a large new market, and one where our sizable SD-WAN installed base can be leveraged as a significant market access point. Together with newly announced SD-WAN service, we plan to accelerate our global point-of-presence POP deployment, with a dual strategy of investing in our own POPs as well as working with service providers.
Fortinet recently announced the result of an independent analysis by Forrester of the cost saving and business benefit of deploying FortiGate next-generation firewall and FortiGuard AI-powered secure service within enterprise data center, which include more than 300% ROI over three years, payback in six months, and 90% reduction in time spent on manual updates. In addition, an independent analysis by Enterprise Strategy Group established that customer who deployed Fortinet security operation solution, such as FortiEDR and FortiNDR, reduced their time to detect and response to incidents from an average of three weeks to one hour. This demonstrates the substantial impact that artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the integration of a Fortinet secure op fabric product can have on organization's ability to secure today's rapidly expanding attack surface.
Finally, new development in AI, such as generative engine, show a lot of promise to various applications in cybersecurity. We believe AI technologies can help us significantly to improve productivity and can be scaled to a large customer base in areas such as malware detection, threat hunting, event correlation, and automation, as well as assisting network design and troubleshooting. Before turning the call over to Keith, I would like to thank our employees, customers, partners, and suppliers worldwide for their continuous support and hard work. Keith?
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Thank you, Ken. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's start with the key highlights from the second quarter. Billings growth was 18%, as well as product revenue growth. Service revenue growth held firm at 30%, resulting in total revenue growth of 26%. OT and SD-WAN revenue continued to perform well, as revenue from these products were up 60% and 40%, respectively. In a sign of our strength in the small and mid-sized customer segments, we added a record 6,500 new logos. Operating margins of 26.9% exceeded the high end of the guidance range by 140 basis points. Free cash flow was strong at $438 million, representing a margin of 34%, benefiting from the deferral of certain cash tax payments to the fourth quarter.
Looking at billings in more detail, billings of $1.54 billion were led by non-FortiGate billings at over 30% growth, representing 34% of total billings. Non-FortiGate billings growth was driven by networking, FortiGate VM, NAC, and cloud. As Ken mentioned, non-FortiGate is nearing a $2 billion annual revenue run rate. In terms of industry verticals, government and manufacturing topped the list as a percentage of total billings, with manufacturing up almost 50%, government and construction were up over 30%, while service provider and retail were up 1% and down 5%, respectively. Retail was impacted by a very difficult compare, as the industry vertical nearly doubled in the year-earlier period. Billings growth varied by geos, with international emerging leading, followed by Europe and LATAM. APAC, and to a lesser extent, U.S. Enterprise, were challenged by difficult prior year comparisons.
Deals over $1 million increased from 122 deals to 134 deals. Turning to revenue and margins, total revenue grew 26% to $1.29 billion, driven by non-FortiGate growth of over 45% and service revenue growth of 30%. This was the second consecutive quarter of greater than 30% service revenue growth. Security subscriptions represent over 55% of all service revenue and continued their streak of strong, increasing sequential quarterly growth, dating back to Q1 of 2022 at 23% to Q2 of 2023 at 34%. Product revenue of $473 million increased 18%. Product lead times and backlog are expected to approach normal levels in the third quarter.
Total gross margin of 77.9% was up 140 basis points, driven by a 160 basis point increase in product gross margin to 63.5%. Product gross margins benefited from earlier pricing actions and easing cost pressures, and were partially offset by certain inventory charges. Service revenues were 63% of total revenues and delivered gross margin of 86.2%. Higher service revenue offset higher labor costs and increased cloud delivery costs as we continue to expand our cloud and SASE delivery models. We see our single-vendor SASE solution opening a large new market and one where our sizable SD-WAN install base can be leveraged as a significant market access point.
We plan to accelerate our point of presence, or POP deployments, with the dual strategy Ken mentioned, investing in our own POPs, as well as working with third-party providers to accelerate our deployment. Operating income of $348 million grew 36%, outpacing revenue growth by more than 10 points, as operating discipline resulted in significant operating leverage. Operating margins of 26.9% exceeded the high end of the guidance range and was up 210 basis points due to the strong gross margin performance and operational efficiencies. Earnings per share increased 58% to $0.38 per share and also exceeded the high end of the guidance. Looking to the statement of cash flow, summarized on slides seven and eight, free cash flow increased 55% to $438 million.
Adjusted free cash flow, which excludes real estate investments, was $498 million, representing a 38.5% adjusted free cash flow margin. Free cash flow benefited from the deferral of approximately $190 million in cash tax payments. As mentioned last quarter, these tax payments, together with other deferred 2023 tax payments, are due to be paid in the fourth quarter. Capital expenditures were $77 million, including $59 million of real estate investments. Cash taxes in the quarter were $38 million. The board recently increased the company's share repurchase authorization by $500 million, and the total available share buyback authorization is now approximately $2 billion. I'd like to share a few significant wins from the quarter that exemplifies the strength of our broad and integrated platform.
First, a global pharmaceutical leader signed an eight-figure deal to adopt Fortinet's Security Fabric, investing in our OT-aware secure networking architecture, as well as our AIOps and threat intelligence solution. Recognizing the market shift to a platform-based approach to security, this company selected Fortinet to secure its highly regulated and sensitive medical data as it continues to drive global operational and financial efficiencies through our broad, integrated, and automated platform approach to cybersecurity. In another deal, one of the largest U.S. school districts, which had recently refreshed its data center firewalls with FortiGates, was seeking to improve its network security posture with a NAC solution that offers better visibility to the devices connected to the network.
Fortinet competed against multiple peers and was able to win due to FortiNAC's ease of implementation, centralized management capability, and superior risk remediation, as well as the tight integration with the district's existing Fortinet Security Fabric. This high seven-figure deal was the largest NAC deal in Fortinet's history. Finally, in a seven-figure displacement, in our largest FortiSASE deal ever, a large bank on its digital transformation journey was searching for a single vendor SASE solution for its hybrid workforce. It selected our FortiSASE solution for its over 40,000 users, as it integrates SD-WAN and SASE into a holistic solution and delivers comprehensive security, both from the cloud and on-prem, while ensuring consistent security policies for all users, regardless of their location and wherever applications are being accessed.
These transactions illustrate how Fortinet's platform strategy, integrated operating systems, and proprietary ASIC technology continue to resonate with customers. Given the heightened interest in AI technology, we could not do this call without discussing Fortinet's investment and innovations in AI. Fortinet has been at the forefront of AI and machine learning innovation for many years, leveraging deep learning and artificial neural networks to power our products and security services, enabling a faster, stronger, and more accurate defense for our customers. One of our first AI-powered use cases was the introduction of the virtual FortiGuard threat analyst. FortiGuard addresses threats in real time with machine learning, coordinated protection, and is extensively used in malware detection and threat hunting. Every time a threat is identified, FortiGuard generates threat intelligence that automatically updates defense signatures across the fabric.
In cloud environments, where scale and speed are critical, AI and machine learning can help security teams keep pace with threats on multiple fronts. All of this happens seamlessly and behind the scenes. Today, our platform ingests and analyzes, on average, more than 100 billion events every day to deliver over 1 billion security updates daily across the Fortinet Security Fabric and ecosystem. While many of our competitors OEM their security from different security vendors, our AI-driven FortiGuard threat intelligence has been built in-house, which allows us to use AI across different sources. Adversaries increasingly are using AI in their playbooks to drive cyberattacks, which only increase the rapidly evolving cybersecurity threat landscape. We continue to invest in AI and machine learning technologies across our products, including generative AI, natural language models, and other implementations to enhance, simplify, and automate security for our customers.
Before moving to guidance, I'd like to offer some observations about the second quarter and about the industry. Regarding the second quarter, we believe macro uncertainty impacted our billings performance through average contract duration, and in the second half of June, an elevated level of enterprise deals pushing to future quarters. We saw shorter contract durations, with the average term decreasing by 1.5 months to 28 months, creating a four-to-five-point billings headwind year-over-year. Normalizing billings growth with a change in contract duration yields billings growth in the low 20% range. Having some level of enterprise deals push to future quarters is not unusual. In Q2 2023, however, an unusually large volume of deals that we expected to close in June instead pushed to future periods.
From a market perspective, CIOs continue to prioritize and invest in securing their organizations in the face of rising cybersecurity threats. We see new regulatory requirements, such as those recently announced by the SEC and the EU Cyber Resilience Act announced earlier this year, that will continue to provide market tailwinds as organizations further increase their cybersecurity investments to comply with new stringent cyber regulations. The cybersecurity industry remains highly relevant as CIOs prioritize cyber spending within their overall IT budgets. As such, the longer-term demand drivers for Fortinet remain very solid. That said, we do see a return to more normal seasonality for Fortinet in the back half of the year, as tailwinds such as the supply chain-driven growth subsides, and we cycle prior period price increases. Moving on to guidance.
As a reminder, our third quarter and full-year outlook, which are summarized on slides 11 and 12, are subject to the disclaimers regarding forward-looking information that Peter provided at the beginning of the call. For the third quarter, we expect billings in the range of $1.56 billion-$1.62 billion, which at the midpoint represents growth of 13% and is consistent with our quarter-over-quarter seasonality prior to the pandemic. Revenue in the range of $1.315 billion-$1.375 billion, which at the midpoint represents growth of 17%. Non-GAAP gross margin of 75.5%-76.5%. Non-GAAP operating margin of 24.5%-25.5%. Non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.35-$0.37, which assumes a share count of between 795 million and 805 million. Capital expenditures of $100 million-$130 million. Non-GAAP tax rate of 17%, cash taxes of $25 million.
As previously mentioned, backlog is expected to approach normal levels in Q3. For the full year, we expect billings in the range of $6.49 billion-$6.59 billion, which at the midpoint represents growth of 17% and implies slightly below normal seasonality in Q4. Revenue in the range of $5.35 billion-$5.45 billion, which at the midpoint represents growth of 22.3%. Service revenue in the range of $3.35 billion-$3.41 billion, which at the midpoint represents growth of 28.2%. The service revenue guidance implies product revenue growth of 13.5%. Non-GAAP gross margin of 75.25%-76.25%.
Non-GAAP operating margin of 25.25%-26.25%. Non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.49-$1.53, which assumes a share count of between 795 million and 805 million. Capital expenditures of $335 million-$385 million due to our continued cloud, data center, and facilities investments. Non-GAAP tax rate of 17%. Cash taxes of $460 million, with approximately $380 million in the fourth quarter. We continue to execute our long-term, long-term strategy and remain confident in the strategy and our solutions. While it's a little early to be providing guidance for next year, we would expect our near-term performance to represent a short-term trough.
Given our confidence in our solutions, our offerings, and taking into account that growth comparisons will ease as we move through 2024, at this early stage, we would expect billings growth to approach high teens by the fourth quarter of 2024. With that, I'll now hand the call back over to Peter to begin the Q&A session.
Peter Salkowski (SVP of Finance and Investor Relations)
Thank you, Keith. Operator.
Operator (participant)
Thank you.
Peter Salkowski (SVP of Finance and Investor Relations)
Yeah, just one quick reminder, before doing the Q&A, if you can please limit yourself to one question, one follow-up question, that would be helpful. Operator, you can open the call.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. As a reminder to everyone to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, you can press star one one again. Our first question is from Brian [audio distortion] JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Brian Essex (Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for taking the question. Ken, I think you, you noted that, you know, and, and Keith commented to it, commented to it as well, reflected that, you know, I guess, the billings, performance and, and guidance reflects enterprise concern about the macro. Could you give a little bit more color there in what you saw from a macro perspective? I think you pointed to weak service provider business. I think investors might draw parallels to, to what they saw with Juniper last week on the carrier side. Maybe if you could include a few thoughts on how dynamics there may be similar or different with regard to what you see, and then I have a follow-up.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Sure. I think for the carrier service provider, we do see they're probably a little bit behind on offer, some service. A carrier service provider, if you look back 10, 15 years ago, is our biggest market. is, like about 30% market share comes from the carrier service provider. Nowadays, security need additional service, like some SASE, all these, function, additional security function in the SASE, which service provider kind of behind. We're still working with them closely, try to help them accelerate the service.
The same time, we also starting to invest a little bit more ourselves, which also, like together with the new service we announced today, the two new SD-WAN service, we feel, invest in certain infrastructure that will helping drive a lot of new service going forward in the security space. Also, can help the service provider to kind of accelerate some of their security service beyond the traditional security service they have.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, I, I would probably add to Ken's comments, particularly as we talk about service providers, but some of the other verticals and its customer segments. I think there's some lessons that we can see from, for example, manufacturing, which did extremely well in the quarter. They continue to have, you know, I feel they think they're under pressure, in the threat environment, so you see them spending fairly richly. It's no surprise if you look at the government sector, which was strong also, you know, they have budgets in a slowing economy, that maybe some of the other industries don't. At the other end of the spectrum, Ken talked about service provider, and people, I think, are aware of that story there more broadly, but also retail.
I think retail is really, you know, a very clear indicator of a vertical that can be one of the first that's sometimes impacted by a slowing economy. Also, and Ken made reference to this in his comments, this concept of digestion. You know, a lot of purchasing around SD-WAN technologies and implementations. A year ago, you saw very, very high growth a year ago, and now going through a digestion period, such to the point that it's actually negative growth in the retail vertical.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Also, interesting, some cloud provider also starting to get into the security space, which also kind of, confuse some of the enterprise customer. That's also sometime may take a little bit more time to evaluate our, our different solution. We do, we do believe there's a hybrid approach, on-premises in the cloud and how would be best for the customer. Even the cloud, probably, much more expensive, or calculate average about 3x to 5x more expensive compared to on-premises, but it's, the combine all together probably will be the best solution to customer.
Brian Essex (Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. That's helpful. Maybe a quick follow-up for Keith. I think you talked about a re-inflection, the high teen billings growth next year. How, how does performance this quarter in your outlook for the rest of the year, impact the 2025, I guess, $10 billion billings target that you'd previously thrown out there?
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, I, I think that, you know, as we go through the, the second half of the year and we enter into our normal planning cycle for 2024, I think that'll be a logical output at that point in time to, to think through to what we're seeing in terms of our 2025 targets.
Brian Essex (Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you very much for your question. One moment. Our next question comes from Gabriela Borges with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Gabriela Borges (Managing Director and Head of US Software Equity Research)
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you. Keith, I want to stay on the medium-term outlook, your comment on high teens billings growth by 4Q 2024, if I heard it right. Maybe just talk us through how you thought about de-risking the six-month and the 18-month kind of outlook, and what are some of the leading indicators you're looking to, to determine when billings growth and product revenue will trough? Thank you.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, I don't know, Ken, if you want to talk about longer term trends in the industry and, and...
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Uh.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
I'll avoid guides for 2024 if you do that.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. If you look back to like, 30 years, which I'm in the industry, network security still have a pretty, good pace of growth, probably between 10%-20% on average in the last, like, 30 years. We feel we have a very unique, huge advantage solution, which we're the only one build our own ASIC. You can see the product we announced today, which has a probably average about 10x, better performance, more function compared to competitive solution, and also much less energy consumption, probably like a 90% less energy consumption. That's where the new SP5 actually, the first product announced actually, is that we have a full team application engine, integrated with ASIC chip, probably more than double compared to the previous version.
That's also helping drive the next few quarter growth, which each, probably every quarter we may plan to announce a new product using SP5. That's a huge advantage, then also drive to the long-term convergence of networking and network security, which going to agree by 2030, the network security will be larger than the traditional networking there. That will continue to drive the network security side growth. On the other side, we also mentioned a few other area, we see the kind of the non-FortiGate part also growing pretty strong. 45% is part of it because consolidation, part of it because certain, like, security budget allocation to certain cloud spending can be allocated to some security.
The other part also kind of, like how to manage among different kind of, vertical and also, some, some inventory side. That's also we try to balance. We, we do believe things will be recovered in the later part of next year. Because the last two years, we see quite a strong product revenue growth, some quarter even over 50%, which is not quite normal, but once things get more normal, so will be pretty much return to the investor average in the last 20, 30 years, which is about 10%-20%.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, as I kind of take that commentary and pull it forward a little bit into, say, Q3 and Q4, I suspect I'll get a fair amount of chance, opportunities to, to talk about the guidance-setting process for Q3 and Q4. You know, I guess I would start off by saying we've certainly seen over the last two or three years in this, the various environments we've been in... you got to be fairly nimble in terms of, you know, your assumptions and, and what you're, what you're looking for. With that in mind, you know, I think I called out on the, in the comments, you know, to see the level of deals that pushed in the second part of June, you know, was the new development. We always have linearity when the deals close, to see the deals push.
I think one comment I would offer is that as I look through the Q3 guidance setting, and the roll-up, you know, the assumptions and for Q3 related to close rates and term and things of that nature and push, I would say, look a lot more like the assumptions that we saw in actual results for Q2 than maybe what we saw with some higher rates or better rates earlier on. I think there's some, some caution built into that, if you will. I think also, if, if you kind of look at the results, where, where the guidance ends up, you can look at top line growth in Q3 versus Q2, that I think is in the low single digits growth sequentially.
That's pretty much in range of where we've seen Q2 to Q3 historically. We would expect that again. Then maybe just a little more caution in the fourth quarter, where, and again, I made a comment earlier, that the seasonality assumption that falls out of the guidance for the full year and is applied to the fourth quarter, actually, suggests a lower level of growth in the fourth quarter than we've seen in other periods. You're offering a certain degree of caution, number one, but also, you know, acknowledging that Q4 last year was a very strong quarter and pretty tough compare.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, also, we do see some strong growth in the new area, like SD-WAN, OT, which grew 40% and 60%, total count on 25% of units. The 5G growth, not, not quite start yet. So we all have the best product for, for all these new solutions. So that's additional growth drive, so we're keeping developing.
Gabriela Borges (Managing Director and Head of US Software Equity Research)
That, that all makes sense. Thank you. Just to clarify, is it safe to assume that 4Q or are you assuming that 4Q billings will be the trough for billings growth?
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, I, I'd have to go back and look at the actual compares, because compares start easing, and, and, I don't want to mix up bookings and billings in this conversation because the timing is a little bit different. I think that the growth in billings in Q4 and Q1 of last year and Q1 of this year were very, very strong.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, also, you can refer to the finance presentation, number 10 page, which we go back to 13 years, since we IPOed 13 years ago. There's some kind of a growth, some kind of margin information.
Gabriela Borges (Managing Director and Head of US Software Equity Research)
Yes, I do. I do like that, slide 10. Thank you for calling that out. Okay. Thank you.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you very much. Our next question will come from Tal Liani with Bank of America. Your line is open.
Tal Liani (Technology Analyst)
Yes, thank you. I'm going to ask my two questions together, with your permission. The first one is, Palo Alto is, is posting their quarterly call for Friday evening, which is always a bad sign historically for a bad quarter. Then you are reporting weaker than expected, although you were very positive last quarter, I remember the calls. Does it mean that the environment deteriorated in the last three months? If the environment deteriorated, what is the source for it? Meaning, is it the backlog drawdown issue that we were concerned with before? Or is it that customers are, are deciding not to buy, push out? I'm trying to understand the meaning of, of both you and Palo Alto, you know, two successful companies' kind of comments.
The second question is, Keith, in your remarks, you said that projects were pushed out. If it were pushed out, why do we see a deceleration, continued deceleration into 3Q and 4Q? I can back out your 4Q guidance, and billings is declining from 18% to 13% to 11%. If it was a pushout, then we would have seen recovery in the second half from pushouts from 2Q's. How do you connect your comments about pushouts versus, quote, unquote, "cancellation" to the numbers, to the guidance? Thanks.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, I'll, I'll go, I'll go first. Ken can talk about what his friend down the street is doing or not doing it to the best of his knowledge. As I kind of alluded to, I'm not, yes, I had pushouts in the quarter. I'm happy with what I saw in terms of July and deals getting closed. I, I retained the concept of continuing pushouts in Q3 and Q4. I'm not here to suggest that there's going to be a one-quarter recovery in that. I think that this is going to take a little bit longer through this economy, kind of normalizes, and this digestion process goes on. I, I think it's really, yeah, picking up something in Q3 from Q2, but I'm also anticipating I'm going to see some things move from Q3 to Q4.
Also the compares, you know, if you go back and look at it, Q3 and Q4 in the billings line, you know, those are pretty attractive numbers that we put up in Q3 and Q4 of last year.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Uh-
Keith Jensen (CFO)
What's he up to?
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I don't know why, why Palo Alto select a Friday afternoon, which is probably, I'm not the one to answer the question. On the, on the industry, we, we do see some company, especially large companies, little bit tighter on the budget and, also kind of, take a little bit long time to, to close in. It's, it's not, not just, this quarter, basically pretty much starting early this year, there are some, some signs of, of that one. How long it will last? It's tough to say, but it's, but usually the security, if they starting to underspend. Then they probably will be starting to go back up, after probably, a few quarter.
On the other side, you do see when the, the big environment starting kind of tough or tight, they tend to be more hung on the current product, current solution, and then buy more service, which we also try to helping customer leverage whatever they have on hand to offer more service, like the SD-WAN service we announced today. That's, that's the service revenue starting kind of doing well, leverage all, all kind of the last few years. The product revenue growth, which we already be the number one in the, in the product revenue in the whole network security space, which is over 28% market share, and also unit shipment is over 52% market share.
I think we'll continue what we keeping leading in the space and with new technology solution like the FortiGate 90G we announced today. It's for us, more focused on long term. We do believe the long-term convergence of network to network security, we feel we have the best technology product to meet that challenge. At the same time, that the short-term environment, we tend to be also see as an opportunity to keeping gaining market share.
Tal Liani (Technology Analyst)
Got it. Do you, can you talk about I know you don't provide backlog, but can you talk about the backlog trends and how much of what we're seeing last quarter, this quarter, next quarter is, is still supported by backlog versus the environment itself? We are all looking through this, the question is whether first half of 2024, for example, we can get to single digit growth instead of the double digits you talk about the end of the, end of the year. I'm not asking you for guidance for first half, but trying to understand how much of current trends are supported by backlog.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, the backlog, I say, already back to normal now, back to, like, before the supply chain issue. You can see last year, towards the middle to the end, we already see the, the FortiGate, we already solved the issue. The majority of most of the backlog all come from some network-related product. That also been eased up in the first half of this year. I say backlogs kind of back to normal before the supply chain issue. There do have certain consolidation. I see the consolidation, probably double digits.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah. I, I think, I think Ken's giving you not the accounting answer on backlog numbers, but the CEO version, that he's done worrying about it, and he knows the company can manage their way through it. From a numbers viewpoint, we still have some backlog that we will pick up some low single digit benefit in Q3. To Ken's point, we think that largely as you get out of Q3, we'll be back to very close to normal backlog numbers.
Tal Liani (Technology Analyst)
Great. Thank you.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Mm-hmm. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you for your question. One moment, please, while we compile the roster. Our next question is from Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank. You're on, welcome.
Brad Zelnick (Managing Director)
Thanks very much for taking my questions. I want to ask one of Tal's questions maybe a little bit differently. You know, a lot of what you shared suggests your market position remains strong, and we've always thought that, you know, the price performance advantage of your architecture, should enable you to actually take share in a tougher environment. I guess what many are trying to figure out is if, if it's tough for Fortinet, does that implicitly mean it's tougher for others out there? Is there anything maybe you can share on competition? That would be helpful, perhaps win rates or pricing dynamics that you're seeing in the market.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I think we still have the best solution, especially level of the ASIC chip. The product revenue is still growing at 18% compared to, I think, Check Point, so -12%, I believe, and some other vendors see its low single digit. We still feel we're keeping gaining market share. On the other side, we also see some consolidation, so it's leveraged our, our installation base. We see some of the other products that are kind of helping sell. On the other side, probably two other kind of maybe timing-related issue. One is, you can see the last two years, on the product revenue growth, if we just on page, I think page three. Oh, no, sorry, page four. Finance... page three or page four, finance statement there.
You know, product revenue growth, probably like a 40%, 50% in some quarter, but all over 30% in last two years. I, I do believe some kind of an inventory is being held by certain customer or some, some other partner or kind of service provider channel. We're also kind of changing the, the policy, service grace period policy early this year, I think in March or April, which instead of give some of the channel one year, and they can enable service, we tighten that up to, like, 90 days, which can help in reduce the some inventory level in certain partner there.
The same time, we do announce the SP5, I think it's early this year, and today is the first product available based on the new ASIC SP5, which probably like 4x or 5x better performance and more application being accelerated and the same time, the same cost. It's kind of, I do believe a certain customer may be also waiting for some of the new products leveraging latest technology. That maybe also has certain, certain kind of impact.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, Brad, I would, great question, and to kind of follow on with Ken there. You know, when I look at the win rates for, say, our top three competitors, right, then you know who they are in the firewall market, I, I'm not really seeing a change in the, in the win rates, the win-loss rates. They were, they were quite consistent, maybe improved in one of the three cases that of the names that we know. I think that, that what, what we don't know is how much is specific to, to us, was that we had deals teed up for the last couple of weeks of the quarter, that were on a path to close, and, and they, and they did not close.
You know, how- I think the question becomes, you know, is that something about the macro and the enterprises that are pushing out spending a little bit, or is it, you know, some area that we need to improve on in terms of how we go about our own internal inspection and forecasting and looking at the detailed deals, right? We'll know more about that as time plays out.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, the retail slowdown is more because of our strong growth. One year ago, almost double, now it's kind of slowed down. As the carrier service provider is still not ramp up yet, we do hope they will ramp up soon.
Brad Zelnick (Managing Director)
Thanks for that color, Ken. Just my follow-up, Keith, as we think about pricing, which has been a tailwind across the whole market, I think, you know, given supply constraints over the last two years, can you give us any update of what the trends are now as supply eases and what's embedded in your assumptions for your guide on billings for this year and next? Thanks.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, I, I think that, when we look at our, our- go back to our, approach we've had for many years, when we introduce a new product, and you heard about the 90, the 90G today, you know, our starting point is, even though it has superior functionality, capacity, throughput, et cetera, is we generally price that a- along the lines of its predecessor. I think one thing that we're seeing, you know, as we move into the second half of this year, is some opportunities to take maybe some targeted pricing actions around use cases.
For example, maybe if you get really far down the low end of the market, where you're dealing with some low-cost franchisee models, you know, maybe we would take some opportunities there to perhaps offer some incentives to our channel partners and such to participate in that market. I think, you know, the margins are, are obviously very, very strong on the product side, and we have that benefit there. I do think it gives us the opportunity to make certain investments in the second half of this year, whether you want to call it price lists or discounts or rebates or incentives to the channel partners.
Brad Zelnick (Managing Director)
Thank you. Very helpful.
Operator (participant)
Thank you for your call. Our next question is from Angie Song with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Angie Song (Equity Research Associate)
Hi, thank you guys all so much for taking my question today. In terms of cancellation rates, could you guys give us any directional color on backlog cancellation rates and, you know, what is assumed in your guidance by year-end? Thank you. I have a follow-up after.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Last quarter, I think cancellation rate we said was high single digits. This quarter, we say it's low double digits, right? And I don't, you know, as backlog continues to subside, as Ken pointed out a moment ago, you know, it's not really going to make that much of a difference whether that cancellation rate goes from low double digits to mid-teens or something, or even 20.
Angie Song (Equity Research Associate)
Got it. Thank you. Just as a follow-up, what percentage of revenue came from SD-WAN and OT security this quarter?
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
We think together over 25%, pretty similar to last few quarter.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Also growing pretty strong, 40% SD-WAN, 60% OT, I think. Yeah.
Peter Salkowski (SVP of Finance and Investor Relations)
The over 25% is a bookings number. I don't think we've given a revenue number for that.
Angie Song (Equity Research Associate)
Perfect. Thank you, guys.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from Saket Kalia. Excuse me, from Barclays. Your line is open.
Saket Kalia (Managing Director)
Okay, great. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions here. Ken, maybe just to double-click on, on the competitive question a little bit, zero in on one segment. I'm wondering how you're seeing SASE vendors in this market. Meaning, do you feel like maybe backing up, Keith, very helpful comment just on how the competitive win rates trend versus the other traditional network security providers. When you look at, at SASE, do you feel like the growing prevalence of SASE is impacting firewall appliance decisions at all?
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I think it's a little bit different market. Somehow, the service provider, the traditional telecom service provider or the security service provider, they are a little bit behind in the last five to 10 years. That's gave the SASE provider opportunity to offer the service. But I do believe a lot of telecom service provider, cloud provider, they have a huge advantage on infrastructure, on the cost advantage to offer some additional security service, so which we're also working closely with them.
At the same time, we also invest in our own kind of infrastructure, because also a lot of our additional service beyond SASE, like the SD-WAN, some module FortiTrust or FortiCare service, also need some of the infrastructure, which will make a more profit model, cost-efficient model, compared to some other SASE provider. They have to whether lease or whatever, which tend to like double, triple the cost compared to the similar service, compared to owning the infrastructure. It's, yeah, it's a, the new service offered by the SASE provider, we do see, meet certain enterprise need, which we also, study and invest more in this area.
Saket Kalia (Managing Director)
Got it. Got it. Keith, maybe for you for my follow-up, very helpful commentary just on the billings duration in the quarter. I, I think that definitely helps bridge the, the gap with, with at least the guide on, on billings in, in Q2. Maybe looking forward, how are you thinking about billings duration for the second half of this year? I don't know, is there a way to kind of do the same exercise? Like, what would billings have been if the duration would have been in line with your original plan?
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Well, I may need a spreadsheet for the second part of that question. I have to talk it, but we'll come back to that.
Saket Kalia (Managing Director)
No, no problem. We can take it offline.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, tht's fine. I, I think, you know, we've-- you know, there's been conversation over the last, say, three or four quarters about it, would duration slow down? And, we commented that, you know, we had seen some slowdown in duration, not one month a quarter, but it would kind of bounce around a little bit. The point I'm making is, when you're measuring year-over-year growth, you know, we lost 1.5 points of duration, which, which works out to be about four or five points of growth. When you're making the comparison, on a growth basis, it really is a factor there. Then if you want to get into the spreadsheet part of it, remember that product is not impacted by duration, only services are, so you get a partial impact.
I think if you're looking forward, you know, as I made the, the point, you know, as we look at Q3 and Q4, you know, the duration assumption, I would say, is in that pool of things that I've looked at what we saw in Q2 in terms of actual results, and how those some of those metrics and assumptions that go into the guidance-setting process differed from what I've been seeing for the prior few quarters, and place a very heavy reliance on what I saw in Q2, whether that deals with push or whether that's term or a bucket of other things. Without going into specifics, I would probably answer that question that way.
Saket Kalia (Managing Director)
Very helpful.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, some additional point of SASE is where the. Especially a lot of companies starting return to work, return to office. We do see a lot of, like, we call it universal SASE, which is supporting both on premise in the office and also work from home. Because you, if you're back in the office, forward all of office traffic to the path, SASE provider, and the process send back to the office, not make much sense. At the same time, we do see a lot of, leverage our SD-WAN leadership there. We do see a lot of, required, a single, vendor SASE, and also some bigger company also, they try to do, they call their private SASE solution.
Instead of a, a process of SASE traffic in the service provider path, they want to own process in their own kind of data center infrastructure, which also we do believe will be a big potential market going forward.
Saket Kalia (Managing Director)
Thanks, guys.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from Shaul Eyal with TD Cowen. Your line is open.
Shaul Eyal (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you for taking my question. Good afternoon. Keith or Ken, can you maybe talk about the performance that you've seen with your go-to market as it relates to your top sellers? Was there anything non-balanced this quarter?
Keith Jensen (CFO)
I'm not quite sure.
Shaul Eyal (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
In my-
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Are you looking for, the, the distribution of salespeople hitting quota, or... I'm not sure I follow the question. Can you try it again?
Shaul Eyal (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
No, no. Actually, actually, I'm looking for your value-added resellers, your notable ones, the biggest one, and whether performance.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Mm-hmm
Shaul Eyal (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
was even or, or balanced or not during the quarter.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, I, I don't have that data handy, to be honest with you.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, we do see the, some release from Exclusive Networks, which probably one of our biggest distributor also. We are also one of their biggest distributor, probably 30% business compound, but they're a little bit more-
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Sorry, I thought you were talking about resellers. I'm sorry.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
All right.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
No, no, you're asking the right question. I don't know about distributors. Yeah.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, I think it's a, it's a similar, common as we, yeah, we are seeing.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
I don't think the mix of the, of our business, if you will, shifted at all significantly. We look at our top three and our top six distributors, you know, we're kind of concentrated in that regard. That mix doesn't really change all that much, you know, maybe a one or two in, in a quarter, and there wasn't something that we saw that jumped out there at us.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, also even go back to the history, also going forward, also pretty similar, yes, similar kind of a forecast, I believe.
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yes.
Shaul Eyal (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you for your question. Our next question comes from Joseph Gallo with Jefferies. Your line is open.
Joseph Gallo (SVP)
Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Given the breadth of your platform, you have a better vantage point than most. When you talk to CISOs, where is the relative health in the cyber budgets, and where are you seeing the most resistance? Given your optimistic comments on 2024, what lends confidence that this is only a one to two quarter digestion period? Is there any historical context to support that?
Keith Jensen (CFO)
In terms of CISO spending, you know, obviously, Yeah, the things that are getting media attention out there now, you know, I, I suspect that if you sit down with a CISO, they'll be talking about it, whether that's, you know, SASE or something with some of the AI technologies or what have you. I don't think that CISOs and CIOs can get away from having to take care of tending their knitting, if you will, with their infrastructure. you know, there always seem to be new use cases for firewalls, you know, and opportunities, if you will. There are use cases still that's on-prem that need to be secured. There are new use cases in the cloud, the edge, et cetera.
I think it's a very difficult career position to be a CISO right now with, with budgets and, and threats that are after them. As it relates to 2024, I think, whatever, pardon me, 2024, yeah, we'll go through our planning cycle, more religiously as we do the second half of the year. I think the point that Ken and I were making is really, you know, as we move back to a more normal buying pattern after we move through the supply chain and the pandemic and so forth, that's what the industry has been historically, and we would have every expectation that, you know, we'd be able to get back in that sweet spot, if you will.
I would also note that, as the, you know, it's not a static comparison, and by that I mean, the compares get easier it seems each and every quarter as you go through 2024.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, the CISO we talked to, they still have a certain shortage of people they can leverage to support in further work from home or hybrid work, work environment. So that's where they tend to maybe more try to using certain service kind of approach. On the other side, they do see they need to make sure that the new infrastructure, whether supporting back to office or supporting we call it universal SASE, universal ZTNA environment, because there's a so many tech service that in kind of a impact. Plus the new area, like OT security, that's kind of.
Also, certain security budget, they also, because, some company, they commit certain cloud spending, sometime leverage that commit spending for certain security, we also see some of that case. That's what happening. That's where we also kind of keeping our hands or helping the secure operation, which is also most of CISO feel how to supporting their operations are pretty big to help them to solve the issue there. Also leverage some kind of AI, some new technology, and also kind of a more broadly deployed network security inside their infrastructure. It is also supporting hybrid work environment is also quite a high priority for them.
Joseph Gallo (SVP)
Thanks. That's very helpful. Then I guess, as we work through this digestion period, how should we think about investments in hiring? You've outperformed in the first half on profit, but yet your guide doesn't necessarily reflect a continuation of that. You know, where should we think of the incremental investments from here and the classic growth versus profit debate as billings moderate? Thanks.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
We're still hiring but also, the hiring probably will be a little bit behind on the top line growth. Make sure we're keeping, improving the productivity efficiency. But also, we probably will also try to enhance certain hygiene process, which we kind of not quite doing the last two, three years during the pandemic. Which certain low performer, we probably need to be kind of more disciplined to have certain performance review or kind of a discipline there
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, I would use that to kind of come back to, I think, Shaul's question, and maybe make a couple points. Yeah, I think that as Ken kind of pointed out, that we've had a lot of salespeople, we certainly have sales capacity to deliver on the numbers. At the same time, I think we've been very faithful to when we talk about the 25% operating margin, and you see us, you know, continually coming in above that. We, we have the opportunity there to, to invest more. And on that note, you know, I think that, you know, the conversations with the, with the channel partners, the distributors that we're having, I think they're much more informative, deep, detailed at the right levels now than they were a few years ago.
There's a lot more cooperation, information sharing, with the distributors. I think a byproduct of that is, I think there's some opportunities for us maybe to invest in our channel partners in a variety of different ways, as we go through this, this next, 12, probably six to 12 months.
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, kind of, keeping refer to the page 10, the last 13 years, the top growth and margin. So that's where we have the margin, and we've been get profit all these 13 years since IPO. So if we need to invest in the growth, we definitely have the margin to do that. But on the other side, we also want to keep a healthy model, and take care of both on the growth and margin.
Joseph Gallo (SVP)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Nowinski with Wells Fargo. Mr. Nowinski, your line is open.
Andrew Nowinski (Senior Research Analyst)
All right. Thank you. I want to ask about the geographic demand trends. You saw, I think you saw strength in international regions in Europe. I was just wondering, you know, how sustainable do you think that demand is in those regions, or are they just maybe one to two quarters behind the U.S. in terms of seeing the impact from the macro?
Keith Jensen (CFO)
Yeah, I, I think that, we have a competitive advantage when you look at Europe and parts of the international emerging, where, where we are oftentimes viewed as being the incumbent and have number one market share. So in an environment in which, you know, maybe the, the IT budgets start to suffer in Europe than they do in the U.S., which is not what we're seeing currently, right? Currently, we're seeing the IT budgets are, are low in the U.S. than they are in Europe, based on some recent surveys. I think we're better prepared to, to work our way through that in Europe because of our dominant position in that market.
Andrew Nowinski (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay, got it. I think you talked about seeing strength in the SMB segment, adding about 6,500 new logos. I guess I was wondering, as it relates to your universal SASE solution, can you just talk about maybe how you're competing against, if at all, against Microsoft's new Entra solutions that are targeting that market?
Ken Xie (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, we kind of more leverage our huge installation base and also the technology, the products, which address the network security. Microsoft definitely have some good customer base in the enterprise side. On the network security, which is address more beyond the certain enterprise, definitely we have some advantage there. We have not seen Microsoft have any solution address network security, network security area. We do believe it's, yeah, there's an opportunity for both companies.
Andrew Nowinski (Senior Research Analyst)
Got it. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. I would now like to turn the call back to Peter Salkowski for closing remarks.
Peter Salkowski (SVP of Finance and Investor Relations)
Thank you, Teresa. I'd like to thank everyone for joining today's call. Fortinet will be attending investor conferences hosted by Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Oppenheimer, Rosenblatt, and Stifel during the third quarter. Further transcript webcast links will be posted in the events and presentation section of Fortinet's Investor Relations website. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to contact me. Have a good rest of your day. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.