Fortinet - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Executive Summary

• Q4 delivered above-guidance top-line and record profitability: revenue $1.66B (+17% YoY) vs Q3 guide of $1.56–$1.62B, non-GAAP operating margin 39.2% (+720 bps YoY), and free cash flow $380M; beats were driven by stronger enterprise refresh activity and normalization of prior inventory charges that lifted gross margin.
• Mix and ARR momentum remained strong: Product revenue grew 18% YoY to $574M (best in six quarters); Unified SASE ARR rose 28% YoY to $1.12B and Security Operations ARR grew 32% YoY to $422M, supporting durable services growth and margin expansion.
• 2025 outlook: Q1’25 revenue $1.50–$1.56B; FY25 revenue $6.65–$6.85B, service revenue $4.575–$4.725B; non-GAAP operating margin 31–33%; EPS $2.41–$2.47; management flagged tariff uncertainty, U.S. federal selling disruption risk, and a prudent posture in early 2025 despite a multi-year firewall refresh tailwind.
• Key catalysts: outsized margin beat vs guidance, accelerating refresh activity, SASE/SecOps momentum, and CFO succession announcement (retirement of Keith Jensen; Christiane Ohlgart to become CFO) that should be neutral-to-modestly positive given continuity and focus on execution.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Record profitability with broad-based gross margin improvement: total gross margin reached 81.9% (+340 bps YoY), with product gross margin up 920 bps as inventory-related charges normalized; non-GAAP operating margin hit 39.2% (+720 bps YoY) as revenue outperformance flowed through.
  • Product growth re-accelerated: Product revenue +18% YoY and +21% QoQ, with strength in mid-to-large firewalls and early enterprise refresh purchasing; SMB grew >30%, EMEA led geographies (>25% growth).
  • Strategic progress in SASE and SecOps: Unified SASE ARR +28% YoY to $1.12B; Security Ops ARR +32% YoY to $422M; management emphasized single-vendor SASE advantages via FortiOS and data sovereignty options; “customers are increasingly recognizing the benefits of a single-vendor approach to SASE” (Ken Xie).

• What Went Wrong

  • Billings growth (7% YoY) lagged revenue as mix shifts and RPO focus deferred some billings; management guided Q1’25 billings +11% YoY at midpoint, adopting caution amid macro/tariff risks.
  • Macro/tariff uncertainty and potential U.S. federal disruption introduced near-term demand risk (LatAm/Canada ~15% of business); management incorporated caution into early-2025 posture.
  • 2025 growth assumptions for product are moderate (~10%) despite Q4 strength, reflecting a gradual (not spiky) refresh ramp and prudent planning; acquisitions dilute operating margin by ~50 bps for FY25.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the fourth quarter 2024 earnings announcement conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star one, one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising you your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Aaron Ovadia, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Aaron Ovadia (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. This is Aaron Ovadia, Senior Director of Investor Relations at Fortinet. I am pleased to welcome everyone to our call to discuss Fortinet's financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2024. Joining me on today's call are Ken Xie, Fortinet's founder, chairman, and CEO, Keith Jensen, our CFO, John Whittle, our COO, and Christiane Ohlgart, our CAO and Sales Operations Leader. This is a live call that will be available for replay via webcast on our Investor Relations website. Ken will begin our call today by providing a high-level perspective on our business. Keith will then review our financial and operating results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2024, before providing guidance for the first quarter and full year of 2025. He will then 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, which could cause our 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 our 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 on today's call are non-GAAP unless stated otherwise.

Our GAAP results and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations are located in our earnings press release and in the presentation that accompanied today's remarks, both of which are posted on our Investor Relations website. The prepared remarks for today's earnings call will be posted on the quarterly earnings sections of our Investor Relations website 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 (CEO)

Thank you, Aaron, and thank you to everyone for joining our call. We are pleased with our strong performance in the fourth quarter, successfully balancing growth and profitability, including record operating margin of 39%, total revenue growth of 17%, including product revenue growth of 18%, our highest growth rate in six quarters, as we further strengthen our market leadership in secure networking. Our strong growth in unified SASE and secure operations with Security Service Edge billings growth of 85%, which drove our unified SASE billings growth of 13%, accounting for 23% of our business. The strong unified SASE growth highlights the value that our customers see in our single vendor SASE strategy.

We are the only vendor to organically develop the key SASE functionality into a single operating system, FortiOS, which integrates market-leading next-gen firewall, SD-WAN, ZTNA, Secure Web Gateway, CASB, DLP, and other innovations, seamlessly unifying networking and security, delivering an enhanced user experience and securing access to applications across on-premise and cloud environments. Using firewall and SD-WAN, customers can deploy FortiSASE in the cloud or on-premise within minutes. We also enable sovereign SASE for service providers and large enterprises to host FortiSASE within their own data center, enabling tightened control of their data and greater connectivity, while leveraging our FortiASIC technology to accelerate SASE function for secure performance. Additionally, Fortinet's AI-powered security, unified management, and single-agent approach provide consistent protection across all locations and devices, ensuring full control visibility and simplified deployment, while also offering industry's simplest licensing and 3x or 5x better performance per user.

AI-driven secure operations accounted for 11% of total billings, while AI growth was 32%. We recently enhanced our security portfolio by acquiring Perception Point, a leader in advanced email and collaboration security. This acquisition strengthened our end-to-end cybersecurity by extending protection beyond email to the entire modern workspace, addressing the growing advanced threat risk in today's elevated threat environment. In secure networking, we continue to lead the industry with a convergence and consolidation strategy, a vision we have been driving for 25 years. Industry forecasts predict that secure networking will surpass traditional networking by 2026. As the number one secure networking vendor, Fortinet secures over half of all global firewalls and leads the convergence trend. Also, as shown on slide four, Fortinet continues to be the only vendor to leverage a single operating system, FortiOS, across five secure networking Gartner Magic Quadrants.

Customers are increasingly recognizing that our FortiOS and FortiASIC technology deliver 5x to 10x better performance than competitors, while enhancing security effectiveness and reducing total cost of ownership. This is especially evident in the operational technology, where OT sales approached one billion in 2024. Today, we introduced the FortiGate 40G, 30G, 50G, and 70G next-generation firewall and unified SASE solution designed for SMB and distributed enterprise, with cutting-edge performance and enhanced security, delivering up to 5x to 10x faster throughput and better threat protection than industry average, and supporting a wide range of secure network interfaces for remote access. In addition, we recently acquired a remaining share of Linksys, our leading provider of connectivity solutions, to expand our enterprise-grade security to employees working remotely, home business, and consumers.

Lastly, I'm very proud to share that Fortinet was recently recognized on Forbes' Most Trusted Company in America list, ranked number seven overall and the only cybersecurity company in the top 50 list, highlighting our transparency and commitment to our customers as the most trusted cybersecurity company. I would like to thank our employees, customers, partners, and suppliers worldwide for their continued support and hard work. I will now turn the call over to Keith.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Thank you, Ken. Thank you, Aaron, and good afternoon, everyone. Let's start with the key highlights from the fourth quarter. We delivered strong execution and financial performance with top-line results above the high end of guidance, together with record operating margins at 39%. Total revenue grew 17%, driven by strong product and service revenues, as product revenue growth pushed up to 18%. In addition, we added a record 6,900 new logos, driven by close alignment with our channel partners. Looking at our financial results in more detail, total billings grew 7% to $2 billion, including double-digit security operations and unified SASE growth. RPO grew 12% to $6.4 billion. ARR growth was very strong for SecOps and grew 32%, and unified SASE, which grew at 28%, to a combined total of over $1.5 billion.

Within Unified SASE, SSE continues to gain traction with ARR growth of 96%, as we continue to see early success upselling FortiSASE to our large SD-WAN customer base. FortiSASE deals increased over 60%, and the pipeline was up 90%. The typical FortiSASE journey starts with the customer's first purchase of our ASIC-based market-leading FortiGate firewall, followed by an expansion to SD-WAN, and then to our single vendor SASE solution. The expansion journey is particularly significant, as over 70% of our large enterprise customers have adopted our SD-WAN functionality and are poised to expand to FortiSASE. Our large enterprise FortiSASE penetration rate increased to 10%. That's up two points just since our November Analyst Day reporting. Rounding out the billings commentary, deals between $5-$10 million increased over 90%. SMB was our top-performing customer segment, with growth of over 30%.

EMEA was our best-performing geography, driven by growth of over 25% from International Emerging. Among our top five verticals, worldwide government and service provider both grew over 20%, while financial services saw the expected challenge from the difficult year-over-year comparison, driven by several seven- and eight-figure deals in the fourth quarter of 2023. Turning to revenue and margins, total revenue grew 17% to $1.66 billion. Product revenue increased 18% to $574 million, our highest growth rate in six quarters, driven by hardware revenue growth of 19%. On a sequential basis, product revenue increased 21% and represents the third quarter in a row with elevated sequential growth. Software license revenue continued its double-digit growth and represented a mid- to high-teens % of total product revenue. Service revenue of $1.09 billion grew 17% to 65% of total revenue.

Service revenue growth was driven by SaaS solutions at 130%, which includes Lacework, as well as strong organic services growth in unified SASE and SecOps. Combined revenue from software licenses and software services, such as cloud, Lacework, and other SaaS security solutions, increased 41% and provides an annual revenue run rate of over $1 billion. Total gross margin increased 340 basis points to 81.9% and exceeded the high end of the guidance range by 140 basis points. Product gross margin of 69.3% increased 920 basis points as inventory-related charges normalized from last year's highly elevated levels, adding 840 basis points to product gross margin and 290 basis points to total gross margin.

Service gross margin of 88.6% increased 50 basis points to a quarterly record, as service revenue growth outpaced labor and hosting cost increases, while benefiting from the mixed shift towards higher margin FortiGuard security subscription services, as well as some early AI-related savings. Operating margin increased 720 basis points to a record 39.2% and was 520 basis points above the high end of the guidance range, reflecting the strong gross margin, an FX tailwind of about 110 basis points, as well as the top-line overperformance that flowed through to the bottom line. Before moving to the statement of cash flows, I'd like to summarize the financial impact from the Lacework, NextDLP, and Perception Point acquisitions. These acquisitions increased fourth quarter billings by 115 basis points versus our expectation of 75 basis points and decreased operating margin by 190 basis points versus our expectation of a decrease of 230 basis points.

Looking at the statement of cash flows, summarized on slides 18 through 21, free cash flow was $380 million, and free cash flow margin was 23%, up 11 points. Adjusted free cash flow was $549 million, representing a margin of 28%, up 16 points. Cash taxes were $156 million, down $186 million, reflecting the prior year's regulatory extension of estimated tax payments, while infrastructure investments were $98 million, or up $71 million. Average contract term in the fourth quarter was 29 months, down one month year over year and up one month quarter over quarter. DSO decreased 10 days, reflecting improved linearity year over year. The remaining share buyback authorization is $2 billion. Moving to an overview of our 2024 full year results, billings exceeded $6.5 billion, while total revenue grew 12% to $5.96 billion, driven by revenue growth of around 25% for both unified SASE and SecOps.

Service revenue grew 20% to $4.05 billion, driven by a 22% increase in security subscriptions and 33% growth in unified SASE services. Gross margin was up 390 basis points to 81.3%, benefiting from the revenue mix shift to service revenue and a 140 basis point tailwind of inventory-related charges normalized during the year. Operating margin increased 660 basis points to a record 35%, resulting in operating income of $2.1 billion, which was up 38%. Our GAAP operating margin of 30.3% continues to be one of the highest in the industry. Earnings per share increased 45% to $2.37. Free cash flow was a record $1.9 billion, representing a margin of 32%. Adjusted free cash flow was $2.2 billion, representing a margin of 37%.

If I were to just sum up 2024, I think it's important to note that we have now met or exceeded the Rule of 45 for the fifth consecutive year. Now, I'd like to share a few significant fourth quarter wins showcasing our SASE expansion and our leadership in operational technology. In a seven-figure new customer win, the healthcare provider strategically included FortiSASE in its first Fortinet purchase alongside SD-WAN while replacing a competitor's firewall. With a new leadership team focused on vendor consolidation, reduced operating cost and complexity, and addressing technical debt, the FortiOS consolidated multiple security functions onto a single platform, modernized an outdated firewall infrastructure, and replaced VPN technologies with a 5,000-seat SASE solution that relies on Fortinet's PoPs. In another seven-figure SASE deal, an existing Fortune 500 SD-WAN retail customer purchased FortiSASE for 2,000 users with the potential to scale up to 12,000.

They chose Fortinet for its flexible and consistent security enforcement, which enhances user experience while securing access to both on-prem and cloud applications. Additionally, they valued our strategy of building our own SASE delivery infrastructure powered by our proprietary ASIC technology, and lastly, in a high seven-figure deal, a large energy company expanded its partnership with us by signing its first enterprise agreement to protect its global critical infrastructure. This customer secures its infrastructure using FortiGates across approximately 1,000 sites, spanning branch locations, data centers, and cloud environments. Key factors in this win included our ability to support their global critical infrastructure both technically and through world-class support programs, our leadership and OT infrastructure capabilities, and the automation and seamless integration of our FortiOS system.

With Fortinet supplying over 50% of the firewalls worldwide, Fortinet security solutions themselves have become critical infrastructure protecting the critical infrastructure in a threat landscape where there has been a step-level increase in sophistication and risk. Given our scale, innovation, and broad adoption, we and national cybersecurity agencies around the world view our partnership as key to protecting the most important customers and entities in this dynamic landscape. Next, I'd like to review some of our key AI solutions for threat intelligence, networking, NOC and SOC, and LLM leakage. For threat intelligence, FortiGuard AI powers security services combined with real-time threat intelligence, helps organizations combat known, unknown, zero-day, and emerging AI-based threats. For networking, FortiAIOps reduces the time needed to diagnose networking issues.

By monitoring trends in the network and with full access to logs across the Fortinet security fabric, our AI engine uses machine learning to understand the optimal conditions for the network and highest potential issues. For the NOC and SOC, FortiAI uses natural language and generative AI to guide, simplify, and automate analyst activities. FortiAI is integrated into seven different network and security operation products, with additional products to be added. For LLM leakage, our AI-based DLP services actively identify and block sensitive information from being uploaded or shared with AI systems. Before discussing our guidance, I'll offer a few updates on the record-level firewall upgrade opportunity that we shared during our November Analyst Day. In the fourth quarter, we saw early upgrade movement with large enterprises, both on buying plans and actual purchases.

We expect the momentum to build as we move into the second half of 2025, as we get closer to the 2026 end-of-service dates. The 2026 and 2027 cohorts present a substantial upsell opportunity for SASE switches, access points, and SecOps solutions. To maximize our upgrade and cross-sell potential, we're implementing several initiatives, including creating sales plays for each customer segment and key vertical, expanding our account plans for larger enterprises to more specifically target the upgrade and expansion opportunities, and collaborating with our channel partners on SMB opportunities, incentive programs, end-user data, and developing targeted bundle offerings for these customers. Moving on to guidance, as a reminder, our first quarter and full year outlooks, which are summarized on slides 23 and 24, are subject to disclaimers regarding forward-looking information that Aaron provided at the beginning of the call.

I should note we expect Linksys and Perception Point to increase first quarter billings and revenue growth by approximately 90 basis points and decrease operating margin around 40 basis points. For the full year, we expect Linksys and Perception Point to increase billings and revenue growth by approximately 125 basis points and decrease operating margin by around 50 basis points. All right, for the first quarter, we expect billings in the range of $1,520 million-$1,600 million, which at the midpoint represents growth of 11%. Revenue in the range of $1,500 million-$1,560 million, which at the midpoint represents growth of 13%. Non-GAAP gross margin of 80%-81%, non-GAAP operating margin of 30%-31%, non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.52-$0.54, which assumes a share count of between 774 and 780 million.

Infrastructure investments of $80-$100 million, a non-GAAP tax rate of 18%, and cash taxes of $30-$35 million. For the full year, we expect billings in the range of $7,200-$7,400 million, which at the midpoint represents growth of 12%. Revenue in the range of $6,650-$6,850 million, which at the midpoint represents growth of 13%. Service revenue in the range of $4,575-$4,725 million, which at the midpoint represents growth of 15%. Non-GAAP gross margin of 79%-81%, non-GAAP operating margin of 31%-33%, non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.41-$2.47, which assumes a share count of between 773 and 783 million. Infrastructure investments of $380-$430 million, a non-GAAP tax rate of 18%, and cash taxes between $525 and $575 million.

On a personal note, you may have read in today's 8-K filing that after a four-decade career in finance, including 11 years at Fortinet, it's time for me to enjoy retirement. I'll continue to serve through the next quarter earnings call and up to May 15th, and plan to stay at Fortinet to help with the transition through June 30th. Most importantly, I'm leaving Fortinet in very good hands. Pursuant to our succession plan, Christiane Ohlgart, who, as discussed in the 8-K, has served in various roles at Fortinet for almost six years, will take over as CFO at my step down in May. I'd like to thank Ken, Michael, and the Fortinet team, and all of you for making this chapter of my life so rewarding.

I very much appreciate the time I've had at Fortinet working with Ken, Michael, the entire team, and certainly with the investors and financial analysts. I know I'll miss Fortinet, its people, customers, and its noble mission to protect and serve important customers and entities around the world.

Ken Xie (CEO)

Thank you, Keith, for your great service and contribution, and Christiane, we're looking forward to working with you in your new role to continue to drive the success of Fortinet. I will now hand the call over to Aaron for the Q&A session.

Aaron Ovadia (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Ken. As a reminder, 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. Operator, please open the lines for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And as a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Hamza Fodderwala with MS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Jonathan Eisenson (Equity Research Associate Analyst)

Hey, thank you for taking my question. This is Jonathan Eisenson on for Hamza. First off, Keith, congratulations on your career and best of luck with retirement and with your next endeavors. So Ken, for you, so I believe some of the hyperscalers like Oracle are big customers and partners with Fortinet. So just curious, as you have Oracle and some of the other hyperscalers building out new data centers, just curious to what extent Fortinet is involved in securing these. Thank you.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yes, thank you. It's a great question. So Fortinet is the only company we develop the secure ASIC processor. It's increasing the secure computing power quite a lot compared to using general-purpose CPU. That's driven a lot of our growth into secure internal segmentation within the data center, hyperscaler, all these things. So we see a huge opportunity, and not just secure networking there, but also a lot of data centers also related to the AI. We also see a huge opportunity to drive the AI security, whether secure the infrastructure itself or secure the data or secure the access. So there's a lot of opportunity. I do believe that's the huge potential for growth because of unique advantage using the FortiASIC.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, and we'll move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Tal Liani with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Tal Liani (Managing Director in the Equity Research Group)

It's an honor for me to ask a question, after John, my ex-associate, that crossed the line. But I want to ask you two things. Number one is about billings. Why is billings weak and weak guidance? And that second question is product revenues outperformed so much this quarter. And that might be a cycle, a reverse cycle, but the guidance for next quarter, I don't see outperformance. So why is it just a this-quarter phenomenon and you don't carry the strength into the next few quarters? Thanks.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah, Tal wasn't sure on your first question about billings. If you were asking about the fourth quarter or the first quarter?

Tal Liani (Managing Director in the Equity Research Group)

I'm asking billing in general. So billing for the fourth quarter was better, but billing for the first quarter is weaker. So why is the weakness in billing?

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah, I think that, yeah. I think if you look at the fourth quarter, maybe we'll start there a little bit. As you recall, when we talked last quarter about the fourth quarter guidance process, there was a lot of concern around the eight-quarter, pardon me, the eight-figure deals and what we were going to get out of that. And we were being cautious in the guidance. That was logically, or rather a prudent approach, where we got the upside was on those deals from $5-$10 million. And I would say the close rate and the opportunity there was probably $40-$50 million more than what I anticipated in the guidance-setting process. And you saw that same overperformance on those larger deals show itself in the product revenue line.

And then also we saw on the product revenue line, our significant growth in product revenue was in the mid-enterprise, pardon me, the mid-size firewalls and the large firewalls. And when you peel back on that onion, you start to see enterprise companies have actually started their purchasing of the refreshes that we talked about at the Analyst Day. So I think obviously the information and the news about Q4 is very good. I think as you look at Q1, whether it's billings or product revenue, probably just a little more caution there as we kind of got exposed to the tariffs here over the last week. And we saw the reaction. And some of the concerns for us were the more of a multinational footprint, particularly in Latin America and Canada, for example, the customer footprint, a little more exposure there.

And then, of course, the direct impact of perhaps some disruption in the U.S. government, where we do have a footprint also, so maybe a little caution in that regard.

Ken Xie (CEO)

Yeah, the other probably may impact some of the billings, really. We are now also driving the ARR, RPO, which is kind of a little bit different than before. It's more about billings. But this is RPO, ARR, probably will defer some billings to the future, but will kind of secure the customer with all the platform, the unified SASE approach. That's where the SASE and the SecOps tend to have a higher growth in the ARR and RPO than the billings.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question is going to come from the line of Gabriela Borges with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Gabriela Borges (Managing Director and Senior Software Equity Research)

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I would love to hear a little bit more on the refresh opportunity for this year. I know you've broken it out for us in product versus cross-sell in a couple of different ways. I wanted to ask you specifically about the implications for subscription revenue as you see the hardware come up for renewal and as you sell some of the networking components on the hardware side into your installed base. So either for Keith or maybe Christiane, how do you think about the implications for subscription specifically as hardware comes up? Thank you.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Christiane, you want to jump in there?

Christiane Ohlgart (Executive VP and Chief Accounting Officer)

Okay. I think at the Analyst Day, I explained a little bit that the existing hardware has subscriptions. In order to grow subscription revenue, we need to upsell and sell either more subscriptions with the same hardware or more services. So we have put plans and incentives in place for our sellers and our channel partners to do so. But that's kind of the prerequisite for us to grow our service revenues or accelerate the service revenues.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah, also the new hardware tend to have more capacity to run additional functions and better performance. That also can enable additional service, including a lot of new service we developed in Fortinet in the last few years like all the Unified SASE function and some other AI kind of base function. That gives the new opportunity to leverage the new hardware.

Gabriela Borges (Managing Director and Senior Software Equity Research)

Thank you for the detail. Congrats on the quarter and congrats to Keith and Christiane as well.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment as we move to the next question. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Essex with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Brian Essex (Managing Director)

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. Keith, I thought when you started with key highlights for the quarter, your retirement would be up to the top. But seriously, it's been a real pleasure working with you. And best of luck on the retirement. Well-deserved. And Christiane, looking forward to working with you. So congratulations on the appointment to CFO. I guess the question I had was with regard to the billings guide for this next fiscal year. Would love it if maybe Christiane, I think you've done a lot of work on it, if you could unpack the assumptions behind that. How much is upgrade, growth of SecOps and SASE, and how much is product-related refresh cycle baked into that? And maybe if you could share an exit rate, that would be super helpful.

Christiane Ohlgart (Executive VP and Chief Accounting Officer)

So in our billings and revenue guidance, of course, we have the two components, right? Product is what we sell this year. Services is what rolls off the balance sheet mostly. And about 10%-15% is from new services that we are selling this year. And our assumptions, of course, are, as we presented at the Analyst Day, that we have a significant upsell component. But we also are planning to, with certain incentives for, again, our own sellers as well as our channel partners, to drive new logos. And from an exit rate perspective, were you looking at exit rate for services or?

Brian Essex (Managing Director)

I guess overall for billings, and then maybe if you can help us understand how much product revenue is baked into that. But really just trying to get a sense of the trajectory that you're baking into billings to kind of get to that full-year billings guidance that you have.

Christiane Ohlgart (Executive VP and Chief Accounting Officer)

The product revenue growth we assume is around 10% right now, as we saw already the significant traction this year. But yeah, that's the current running assumption.

Brian Essex (Managing Director)

Okay, that's helpful. And does that require an exit rate in Q4 of high teens billings growth, or are you expecting a more moderate build throughout the year?

Christiane Ohlgart (Executive VP and Chief Accounting Officer)

Right now, it's more moderate.

Brian Essex (Managing Director)

Okay. Super helpful. Thank you so much, and congrats.

Christiane Ohlgart (Executive VP and Chief Accounting Officer)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Fatima Boolani with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Fatima Boolani (Managing Director, Co-Head US Software Equity Research)

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions, and Keith, congratulations. I hope you very much have an enjoyable ride into the sunset. It's been terrific partnering with you. I wanted to go back to some of the commentary you made on the tariff impact. I did want to dig into that a little bit, so I think there is a significant amount of uncertainty from these tariffs. They're in flux. There's some potential retaliatory policies being thrown around, so I both wanted to dig into some of the demand comments you made and how far-ranging those are and how they are being contemplated in guidance, and then also from a supply chain perspective, how is that influencing or potentially impacting your supply chain and ultimately COGS and gross margins? Thank you.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah, as you pointed out, it's an extremely dynamic time, if you will, and trying to understand where these may end up. I would say that for selling purposes, for demand, we have a fairly significant footprint in both Latin America and Mexico, as well as Canada. And over the weekend, when the tariffs were announced, there was a lot of activity here internally Sunday night and Monday morning to understand what the disruption would be more about those economies and their buying habits, if you will, of our products. And I think it's that type of reaction that we're focused on. I would also supplement that with a little more context. Our FortiAuthenticator product, I believe it is, is actually a very small product line, but it is manufactured in Canada. And we were looking at what the tariff impact would be like that.

Then by Monday night, all those things, all bets were off. So we're kind of chasing a little bit. And we do have, similar to our sales leadership in Latin America raising their hand immediately in what they were seeing and being concerned about with Mexico, our U.S. federal team similarly raised their hand and said, "If there aren't going to be employees in the federal government to sell to, it's going to be challenging." So I just think we're acknowledging that it's a very dynamic situation right now. And let's try and not get too far ahead out of our skis until we know more. On the other side, I think in terms of tariffs coming into the country or products, keep in mind that our pure U.S. business is around 25%, 26%, 27% of our total business.

So obviously that 30, pardon me, 70% plus international would not be subject to the tariff schemes of the U.S. And I think there's obviously, if we had to respond in some way to the market, I think the tariffs would be broad brush and would affect not only ourselves and our U.S. business for that remaining 25-26%, but our competitors as well. And I would expect that we would still, at this early stage, still have the pricing advantage that we currently have.

Fatima Boolani (Managing Director, Co-Head US Software Equity Research)

Thank you. Christiane, congratulations.

Christiane Ohlgart (Executive VP and Chief Accounting Officer)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Shaul Eyal with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Shaul Eyal (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thank you so much for taking my question. Good afternoon. Congrats on results. Congrats, Keith, and congrats, Christiane. Keith, my question maybe builds a little bit on the prior question, but touches more specifically on your U.S. performance. This year, you had, I think this quarter, the best quarterly performance in 2024. Do you see that being sustained into 2025, given some of your prior investments? What are the plans specifically as it relates to U.S. sales operations? Thank you.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah, it's a great question. So I think probably starting a little bit over one year ago, we started enhancing U.S. enterprise sales and also more focused on adding sales capacity and also kind of working closely with our channel partner to drive the growth, which both in the high-end and also drive the program with a partner there. So we see some pretty good results. And so we do see there's a lot of room to grow in the U.S. And at the same time, we have a huge advantage on the resource, on the facility, on the people here in the U.S. and Canada to continue to drive the future growth. So that's why we see the U.S. could be the fast-growing region in the next few years.

Shaul Eyal (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Thank you. One moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question is going to come from the line of Rob Owens with Piper Sandler Companies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Robert Owens (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. And thanks for taking my question. I was hoping you could expand a little bit just on the Linksys relationship and what you hope it brings. And I know, Ken, you did outline some expectations relative to revenue and billings, but just strategically, where it positions you better. Thanks.

Ken Xie (CEO)

Yeah, Linksys is actually we acquired about 51% of Linksys about three years ago. And then we keep in driving shaping the company to more line up with our own kind of secure networking strategy. But also this all kind of the new market, we feel Fortinet probably is the only player can play in the consumer home-based network security because we have this technology like ASIC. We have all this unified SASE. And together with the Linksys, it's consumer and also the huge user base, which they have 25 million active users and has been shipping almost 250 million devices in the last almost 40 years. So it's a leading brand. And with this customer base, with our technology and all this combined resource, we feel we can really drive the new market for consumer to support and work from home and also to cover some SMB space.

We see pretty fast growth. So that's the strategy. But that's also probably will take some time to continue to kind of develop all this technology market together. But we do feel this could be a huge potential in the next five to 10 years for the company growth.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And we'll move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Eric Heath with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Eric Heath (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking the question here. And Keith, congrats as well. So Keith and Christiane, I wanted to understand a little bit just ahead of the refresh opportunity that's starting in the second half. How should we be thinking about inventory levels in anticipation of that demand? And then secondly, maybe to follow on to Brian's earlier question, just the assumptions embedded in the product guidance specifically from the end-of-service refresh, are you assuming half of that $400-$450 million opportunity happens in 2025? Thanks.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah, I'll cover off the inventory question a little bit, and then maybe Christiane can come back over the top and talk a little bit more about the model for 2025, and I don't know that we'll assign specific dollar amounts to each individual item in that, but in any event, Ken, I've been at this for a long time. He likes to see inventory turns at two. I like to see inventory turns at five or six. I lose constantly on the inventory turns. We've gone through the supply chain cycle here. You saw the inventory turns. We did very well with those storing inventory, if you will, on our balance sheet as we got into COVID and supply chain crisis, and it really helped fuel the super cycle for us on our income statement.

With that in mind, I think a healthy number for us, I'd have to agree with Ken now, is probably in the range of 2x for the turns. I would imagine that you could expect us to target that each quarter in terms of our inventory balances.

Christiane Ohlgart (Executive VP and Chief Accounting Officer)

Yeah, on the linearity of the product revenue assumptions-wise, there is definitely a compelling reason to refresh in the second half year because you can only renew for one year. We've seen refresh activity happen already, especially for large customers. And we will try to accelerate the upgrade cycle as much as we can. So we've assumed that there's a more gradual than kind of spiky upgrade path.

Eric Heath (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you and one moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Saket Kalia with Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Saket Kalia (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions here. And I tip my cap to both of you on your respective exciting next steps. So very clear numbers and a lot of helpful questions. Keith and Christiane, maybe I'll ask just a couple of housekeeping questions, if I may. First, can you just remind us, I think you touched on it a little bit, can you remind us how big LATAM and Canada are just in terms of percentage of billings? And then maybe on top of that, can you just remind me of the 12% growth that we're guiding to roughly in 2025? How much of that is organic versus inorganic?

Christiane Ohlgart (Executive VP and Chief Accounting Officer)

To your first question, LATAM and Canada are about 15% of total business, and on the organic growth number, we expect about 1 point in organic.

Saket Kalia (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Adam Borg with Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Adam Borg (Stifel Financial Corp)

Hey, guys. You've got Max on here for Adam at Stifel. Thanks for taking the question. Over the last few quarters, we've talked about SASE and SecOps billings coming primarily from existing customers. So as we look out into 2025, just wondering what the opportunity is for SASE and SecOps to become a more meaningful contributor to new logos, or do you expect that to kind of remain as primarily an upsell motion?

Ken Xie (CEO)

I think we do have a huge installation base on the legacy firewall and also SD-WAN. I still feel growth upgrade from that part probably will come most of the new unified SASE. And that's also more easy sell for the sales force and also for the partner. I believe the last few quarters, probably over 90% will come from existing customers, which are already all legacy firewall and also SD-WAN customers, which gives us also more advantage compared to all this SASE-only player. So that's where and that's also the reason is also because we have the single OS for all this networking security with all this SD-WAN and also all the SASE functions in the same OS. It's a very easy upgrade. On the other side, we do see a lot of new customers, and especially some big enterprise.

Some of them do have issues with some other SASE players. And we do have a lot of advantage on the better function, better integration, a single OS solution, and much better performance and pricing. Like I mentioned, probably 3 to 5x more price advantage. And plus our own kind of infrastructure supporting this kind of lower cost, better margin. And at the same time, integrate function together is more easy to manage and better protection. So that's the advantage we have. That's where we also pretty confident. We believe we not only were leading the number one player in the leading firewall and the SD-WAN, we also gave us some time where also we're leading becoming a number one unified SASE player in the space.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah. And I think Ken's spot on in terms of the factors that can help build on one of those, which is removing or reducing complexity and reducing cost and making things simpler. I was really impressed with the first deal that I talked about in the script here when I talked to the sales team, which was a pure white space account that started off as a competitive firewall displacement. And we know we're really good at that, and we know how to do that. But then to see them consult and collaborate with a customer and make it not only an SD-WAN deal, which made a ton of sense, but also to get them on board on the SASE deal. And I think that speaks to, well, we're a very good sales team that brought that to the table for us.

The evolution and the maturity that you're seeing in our own organization as we get more experience underneath our feet and our ability to branch out and sell into those organizations that are focused on a consolidation play, removing complexity and controlling cost.

Ken Xie (CEO)

Yeah, that's also we benefit from a lot of our long-term investment like in the single OS, in the hardware, and also in the ASIC. So we are the only ASIC designer in the whole space. And a lot of new ASIC design will drive the new SASE function. We'll keep and give us a much better performance, lower cost, lower consumption. And also the sovereign SASE for service provider, for enterprise, for data center, we also see a lot of growth potential. That's really the unique advantage Fortinet has.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And we'll move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Shrenik Kothari with Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Shrenik Kothari (Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, yeah. Thanks for taking my question. Just really solid unified SASE growth rates. You guys are seeing increased penetration among larger enterprises, which in the earlier commentary was still building momentum. So just curious, can help provide an update on specific incentives which are tied to kind of upselling SASE, SecOps, and how these incentives are impacting overall kind of product matrix, deal conversion, and yeah. And then I have a follow-up question as well.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah, as well, we do want to accelerate the training to both our sales team, the technical team, and also our partners. But they do see the customer definitely sees some of the long-term benefit of using a single OS to gradually add more function and add more security and easily upgrade to the next kind of security function they needed. And on the other side, I think we also need to keep on hiring and keep on adding sales capacity and at the same time provide better training. On the other side, we see the feedback really from customers and partners. They do see this upgrade of SASE is much easier compared to the new SASE approach and much shorter sales cycle. And you can see since we only launched our own SASE approach a little bit over one year.

You can see the ramp-up is very, very quick and probably fast-growing in the SASE space right now. We do see a lot of great potential going forward.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Junaid Siddiqui with Truist Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Junaid Siddiqui (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you for taking my question. Keith and Christiane, congrats to both of you. Keith, you mentioned SMB being one of the top-performing customer segments, which is a bit different from what we hear from some of the other vendors. I was just curious, what is underpinning that demand, and what are you seeing that others are not? Thank you.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

I think the channel program at Fortinet is probably fairly mature. I mean, Ken's been doing it for a long, long time. I don't think we're scrambling to find channel partners, if you will. I would also give a lot of credit to Christiane and what she's done in her year here, which is really focused on the channel and getting the more senior levels with the channel leadership to understand what's important to them and how to structure incentives that are tailored to what the channel is trying to accomplish. There's just much more collaboration with channel partners today than I've ever seen before here. And I think we had some fairly specific and targeted incentive programs in the fourth quarter that Christiane helped develop.

I think those were, as you see in the numbers, the new logos and 6,900 and the mix of the business, extremely successful.

Ken Xie (CEO)

Yes. And generally, I also see we have probably the best product because none of our competitors, not a single, has this technology single OS with so many. It's almost 30 functions integrated in the same single OS and with about half the function, about 14, 15 using ASIC to accelerate. That's given us huge performance and functional advantage than any other competitor because the SMB, like the three models we announced today, they run the same FortiOS compared to some other big box, big appliance there. And that's where the SMB and even the long-term home users see some huge advantage using the same FortiOS. They can kind of either connect to the enterprise or they can connect to the cloud and also leverage all this new unified SASE approach.

So that's where we feel as a technological advantage gives us huge kind of unique benefit to our customers. SMB customers eventually can be the home user consumer space, which we feel is because so far, even in the U.S. and Europe, the developed country, the SMB still has only single digit of SMB customers have any network security to protect their network in there. So we do see there's a lot of growth potential. But how to address this technology needs to be easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to support in AI and all this. And that's where we kind of invest quite a long time. And we do see it's kind of a long-term benefit of this long-term investment, also huge potential going forward.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Gallo with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Joseph Gallo (Senior Vice President and Software Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Keith, congrats on the much-deserved retirement and congrats to Christiane. Look forward to working more with you. It was great to hear about the early end-of-life refresh demand. In those early renewals, how was the average deal size increased versus four years ago? I'm just trying to understand how you're thinking about the size of the cross-sell opportunity versus that $450 million product refresh. Thanks.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah. I think trying to make the point that what we've seen, and I guess it kind of makes sense, is that the larger enterprises are probably moving first. We expect that the SMBs may move a little bit later on the timeline. They probably have less advanced purchasing departments and maybe less regulatory pressures and things of that nature. There's probably a lot of reasons for it. I think what you see in our large enterprises historically is they often have a deployment schedule. They may not necessarily take all the equipment at one point in time, but rather take a certain amount each quarter, maybe nothing in one quarter and more in the third quarter.

It was that same buying behavior pattern that I think we started to see in the fourth quarter when we started looking back at some of these more regulated industries, also some technology companies. We could see the swapping out of the mid-range products that are being end-of-life and then taking on new products. We talked to the account person about, yes, they're on that runway, and they will continue doing that now over the next several quarters.

Christiane Ohlgart (Executive VP and Chief Accounting Officer)

Let me add to what Keith just said regarding your question of average deal size. So as we have a lot of large customers that have enterprise agreements, they pretty much have an ongoing purchasing habit of replacement devices that they build out during the EA. So you don't necessarily see creeping up larger deals because they negotiate at a certain point in time what they need for the next five years, and then they buy as they are ready to upgrade.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, and one moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ittai Kidron with Oppenheimer & Co. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ittai Kidron (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thanks. And congrats as well for both of you, Keith and Christiane. Good luck. And enjoy retirement, Keith. You earned it. A couple of questions for me. Just again on this upgrade cycle, if you know the devices and you can ping them and you know exactly where they are and when they get retired for the vast majority, can you just be a little bit more specific on what was the contribution of this upgrade to revenue this past quarter and what is the exact dollar contribution you expect from the upgrade in your 25 guide? And the second question is for Ken on SASE. Great to see the progress in adoption over there. Can you comment, though, of how much of the adoption with the large enterprises is against brownfield displacement of old SASE solutions or walking into a vacuum?

Would love to understand how much of your footprint, in your opinion, has something that you need to displace versus you're stepping into a vacuum? Thank you.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

Yeah. I think it's a great question. And keep in mind with the two-tier distribution model, we sell to distributors, we sell to resellers, we sell to end users, and oftentimes it's SMB. The quality of the data about the end user gets better and better the closer you get to the end user, which would be with a reseller. And it's why you heard a reference in the script about the importance of working with them on data gathering. There's a bit of an honor system when they register the devices. It may be more intuitive to us that, of course, when you get a new device, you register it like our phone or something like that. But that's not what happens in practice, particularly in the SMB.

Really, there's a heavy reliance there on a channel to spend time and energy if you want to get good reporting and tracking on that. We'll get better at it as we go, and that's part of working closer with the channel partners. It is easier, "easier" with the enterprises because we can talk to our sales rep who's working in the large enterprise and understand the account plans and what they're seeing, but you're still only getting a partial set of information. I think the reporting and the information will get more mature as we go along. It's moving pretty quickly right now on us in terms of how we're developing it. Anyways.

Ken Xie (CEO)

Yeah. For your second question, actually, you can refer to the presentation slide number five. So they do give some enterprise penetration rate. I think for SASE, it's around 10%. It increased two points from two months ago on Analyst Day. And then also SD-WAN in a large enterprise, probably about 70%. So that's where we see we are leading in the NGFW market. And then that's actually driving a lot of SD-WAN growth. And then also after SD-WAN, the SASE will be the next growth for keeping helping customers build better security infrastructure.

Keith Jensen (Keysight Technologies logo Member Board of Directors Member Board of Directors)

In terms of your question, whether it's brownfield or not, we are seeing some of our biggest SASE deals as displacements of either legacy VPN providers or legacy SASE providers.

Ittai Kidron (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Aaron Ovadia for closing remarks.

Aaron Ovadia (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you. I'd like to thank everyone for joining today's call. We will be attending an investor conference hosted by Morgan Stanley during the first quarter. The Fireside Chat webcast link will be posted on 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 great rest of your day.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.