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Thank you, Meta. I should start by just saying that some of our statements may contain forward-looking statements. We'd ask that you please listen to these in the context of our SEC filings and that actual results may differ from those that are discussed or implied.
All right. Perfect. So welcome, everybody. I'm Meta Marshall. I head up networking here at Morgan Stanley. We're delighted to have F5 Networks here with us today. We have Frank Pelzer, EVP and CFO, and Tom Fountain, EVP of Global Services and CSO. So a couple of weeks ago, you guys held a strategy session that I thought was super helpful, and it outlined your market opportunity had grown from $11 billion to $16 billion today, and with certain product expansions you've made over the past couple of years, and was growing to $34 billion by 2028. Just what are some of the changes that the portfolio has undergone, that have helped grow the total addressable market so meaningfully?
Yeah. So if you go back 5 or 10 years ago, most organizations had spent a tremendous amount of time collecting all of their applications and putting them in data centers. And we had a model where you connected directly to those apps in a singular data center. The rise of public cloud sort of promised that all we needed to do was to take those applications and move them from the data center into the public cloud, and you'd keep them in one public cloud and enjoy sort of all of the cloud benefits that would follow. The reality for most organizations is that that isn't the world that they live in. That instead, most of their applications today are distributed across a wide range of different environments.
Some of them are the traditional data centers, some of them are colo, sometimes it's the public cloud, increasingly now it's even the edge. And so those apps are quite distributed. Seeing sort of this transition in the market, we have really pivoted F5's portfolio to address sort of this growing what we call crisis, that is the quote, "Ball of Fire," that customers are facing in managing these multi-cloud environments. And so, you know, we've done that across sort of all three of our major platforms. So our BIG-IP franchise, we've really innovated there for the next decade and have brought a lot of the cloud benefits to the deployable products in BIG-IP.
With our NGINX business, we are able to address modern applications, and we brought a lot of security functionality to be able to protect those applications. And then through a combination of acquisitions and a lot of organic execution, we built our Distributed Cloud platform that is our platform for SaaS and managed services. And that platform is able to address a number of both traditional and modern application use cases. And so we believe that we are the first and only vendor to provide sort of this application security and delivery across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. And the result is a much larger market opportunity that's now available to us.
Okay. So, you know, as you're solving for customers, kind of Ball of Fire and the complexity that these environments have created and expanded out that portfolio, at the strategy session, you rolled out some attach rates that were impressive just as that portfolio has grown. Can you just outline those for the audience and just, you know, why you think you've seen traction with kind of the larger customers first?
Sure. So, let me take that one. We did talk about our land and expand motion-
Mm-hmm.
At our strategy and product session, and let me give a little bit of context. So, our customers are generally the largest of large enterprises, governments, and service providers. And, you know, we've got about 20,000 of them.
Mm-hmm.
When you take a look at, you know, some of the specifics, we kind of talked about four key metrics. In our portfolio of BIG-IP, NGINX, and Distributed Cloud, our SaaS managed services, you know, within, I think from FY 2020 to FY 2023, we have doubled the number of customers that have both BIG-IP and NGINX.
Mm-hmm.
We did the same thing actually for BIG-IP and SaaS managed services. By the end of FY 2023, over 50% of the NGINX customer base were also BIG-IP customers, and I think over that same period of time, 63% of the SaaS managed service also were BIG-IP customers.
Mm-hmm.
There has been, you know, great, great attach. The other two metrics that we sort of pointed to is, you know, taking a look at just the subset of that 20,000 customers, our top 1,000 customers, from 2017 to 2023, we went from 3% having multiple solution families, to 44% over that same period of time. In the total customer base, it went from 1% to 7%.
Mm-hmm.
So, within that, you know, the largest of large, that is where we've seen-
Mm-hmm
...most of the traction, but we still have plenty of ocean to surf, as Chad likes to say, our head of sales, for all of our customers, in terms of attach rates. I think it's really made a couple of things. One, the largest of our large customers probably have the most complex environments-
Mm-hmm
... and need really a centralized tool in which to manage all of that.
Right.
That's really what the Distributed Cloud platform gives, as well as they are modernizing their portfolio, which is what NGINX provides. So I think just from a sort of dollars that they have to invest and the complexity that they need to manage, they're the first starting point of that.
Mm-hmm.
I would also say that, you know, those are probably the bigger opportunities, and we have a sales force that's coin-operated, and so they can,
Right
... you know, they're, they're gonna probably spend their time on some of those larger opportunities.
... And so, I mean, a point that we've had kind of in discussions is, you know, don't take the attach rates to mean that those customers are fully penetrated.
Absolutely.
And so both in terms of how do you increase that penetration with the customers you've already made traction on, and then what are the initiatives to kind of bring those attach rates kind of further, further down market where, you know, maybe less dollars-
Right
but still tons of opportunity?
So I think, you know, again, our focus is probably still gonna be on the largest of large in the near term. But over time, particularly as the use cases for our centralized console are better understood with Distributed Cloud, as our channel partners are better educated on the entirety of the portfolio, we will start to see more penetration down market.
Mm-hmm.
We are never gonna really be an SMB provider.
Right.
But, you know, we do obviously have a huge amount of opportunity with enterprises that maybe aren't the largest in the world. So I think, you know, over time, we will be able to dedicate more resources to the lower end of the market, but right now we're still focused on the top end.
Okay. Okay. So increasing penetration of those attach rates-
Yep
or kind of those accounts. Okay.
Absolutely.
You know, you're dominant in the ADC market. Just how do you translate some of that competitive positioning, both in terms of kind of channel education, but customer education, about some of these platform extensions that you guys have made?
Yeah. So the largest of the organizations that Frank was speaking to, I think, have tremendous trust in F5. And that gives us a really powerful position to start with our land, but then really expand-
Mm-hmm
... in a variety of different ways. Maybe to add a sharper point to kind of some of those levers, you know, I think one of them is certainly as the number of applications in these environments grows, we are able to grow with the demand around any one of those applications.
Mm-hmm.
The second is that we can expand to new applications within the environment. I think our NGINX business, as an example, allows us to address modern applications. And so a lot of our work has been about being able to expand to every app and every API in an organization. And then the third lever really is around bringing new functionality into each of those applications. And we've done a lot of work around continuing to expand our security portfolio in particular, but we've got a very broad set of security, delivery, and application optimization functionality.
And so each of those three levers are able to give us a significant opportunity to expand within accounts, and that's what Frank was speaking to with some of the statistics on some of the great results that we're seeing.
Okay. So I mean, as you expand that platform, and, you know, you've traditionally sold to a chief network operator, increasingly, you're also selling to the security teams or kind of some of the more modern, development teams. Just how does that change maybe the channel partner that would've traditionally kind of sold into that environment and efforts to kind of expand the channel that you're selling-
Yeah
- through?
So we've done quite a lot of work over a number of years around cultivating the right channel.
Mm-hmm
... partners. We have really evolved our selling motions over the last five or six years. If you go back five or six years ago, we were fairly transactional and really around repeat buyers and selling them sort of refreshes. You know, over the last five or six years, really, as we've built out our software and subscription capabilities-
Mm-hmm
... we've really changed it to a continuous selling motion. And along that path, you know, we have continued to work with partners that are capable and able to do that, that are able to bring us into the right opportunities. We are deeply committed to making sure that our partners are successful in these engagements. And so, you know, we're seeing, you know, really good success with the partner ecosystem that we have today. Maybe just as an example of that, you know, in the last 3 months, you know, we've trained 1,000 partners on our newest offerings on Distributed Cloud. And with some of the market dynamics and the competitive dynamics right now, we're seeing actually increased interest from partners-
Yeah
... in doing even more with us. And we think and expect that by the end of this quarter, we'll have 1,500 partners trained on our Distributed Cloud platform, so-
Okay
... quite, quite excited.
Just where do you feel... You know, that rounds out kind of the channel education process that you guys have gone through. Do you feel like your customers are-- How much of that has translated to customer awareness of how much the portfolio has expanded?
Yeah. I think, I think some of it has.
Okay.
But there is an opportunity to do more. Just this last month, so in February, we held our big customer event, we call it AppWorld. And this is the first time of getting our customers together in five years now. And we were able to share with them sort of the entirety of the portfolio-
Mm-hmm
... and really the vision that we're pursuing. And I think, you know, had resounding sort of support from the customers that were there. We're now taking that show on the road.
Yeah
... and so we've got a series of regional AppWorlds that are planned globally through the next couple of quarters to get that message out there. And so we've got a lot of activity there that's trying to get to more customers. Maybe the other piece that I'll add to it is we think that part of the equation here is also about making it easier-
Mm-hmm
... for customers and partners to do business with us. And, you know, some of that is around the products and being able to integrate and deliver sort of this cohesive portfolio of solutions that promotes and encourages your use across sort of all these different environments. But it's also about the contracting and commercial vehicles.
Mm-hmm.
And so we've put in place the commercial model that makes it easy for customers to start with one product and then be able to expand across the portfolio as they consume more from us.
Okay.
And so we think that the combination of all of these will help educate the customers on sort of the opportunity to use us in different ways across their environment.
Okay. TMT 2024, we'd be remiss not to talk about AI. So just how much do you see as AI as being a catalyst for the organization? And just looking at your applications more, you know, organizations and customers looking at their application environments more holistically, and, you know, what kind of opportunity does that create for you as they kind of look at these environments?
Yeah. So I think, you know, I don't know that AI will be a catalyst for them to think holistically.
Okay
... necessarily, but it, it absolutely is gonna be a huge catalyst for this Ball of Fire problem that we described.
Right.
I think there are two defining characteristics to AI apps. I think, you know, effectively, all apps in the future are gonna be AI-powered in-
Yeah
... in some way, shape, or form. The two characteristics that really make these AI-powered apps unique is, one, they tend to be very dependent upon application programming interfaces or APIs.
Mm-hmm.
And the second is that the data and the apps, particularly on the inference side, are highly distributed.
Mm-hmm.
And so both of those are gonna put even more pressure on this Ball of Fire problem, the multi-cloud and hybrid reality that our customers face. And so we think that those are accelerants for the things that we're able to solve. F5 really is an AI enabler. And so, you know, we think that these forces are gonna create more apps in the world. They're gonna create more APIs. They're going to distribute them into more places. And then, of course, as they do all of that, security is gonna become an even bigger problem. And we think that the vendor that understands how applications and security all come together is gonna be best positioned to be able to help them solve these problems.
And I think we are definitively the experts at doing that.
How do you think of? I mean, the question of the day is, when does AI actually act as a trigger for kind of some of this investment? Just what are you kind of hearing from customers? As I'm sure you're not seeing demonstrable orders today, but just, how are they thinking about that?
Yeah. So, we are seeing some early, both, you know, everything from startups to large tech companies-
Mm-hmm
... that are starting to build AI models and AI-powered applications. But the vast majority of enterprises are really in an experimental phase right now.
Mm-hmm.
So they're testing sort of different applications. They're testing how AI is gonna work for them. And we really think that sort of over the next 1-2 years is really when they'll start to build AI-powered apps in a much more significant way, and start to build out both the infrastructure and then ultimately the delivery capabilities to bring those apps to users.
Okay. So another tailwind for you guys has just been kind of the disruption in the competitive environment. Just how are you taking advantage of some of that disruption and, you know, particularly just as some of your competitors are just under new management altogether?
Yeah. So, you know, I think, we are taking share, across a number of different segments, but ADC, the application delivery controller space, in particular. You know, first, we made a series of deliberate decisions over the last several years, to invest in innovation in both our hardware and our software. And today, we have a superior set of, capabilities around performance-
Mm-hmm
... a lot of functionality, particularly around cloud-like capabilities, and overall, a TCO advantage-
Yeah
... as a result of those investments that we've made that our competitors chose not to. We're also seeing a bunch of sort of immediate actions that our competitor set is taking that is also giving us a significant opportunity. You know, a lot of our value proposition or a portion of our value proposition is really around the choice and flexibility that we provide customers, being able to operate in all these different environments, to be able to consume it in a variety of different models: perpetual, subscription-
Mm-hmm
... consumption. Again, our competitors are significantly narrowing that set of, of-
Right
... which deployment models they're gonna make available and under which license models they're going to make available. And the effect of that is that we're able to gain share because customers don't like to be...
Mm-hmm
... boxed in that much. I'll use maybe just as an example, we talked about it on the most recent earnings call. But a Fortune 100 customer that had been a longtime customer of one of our direct competitors, deeply embedded in their organization. That customer has gotten quite frustrated with the lack of innovation. They were dissatisfied with having only a single model that was available to them for how they had to consume the technology. And then frankly, the straw that broke the camel's back was a significant price increase on the services. And they've now come to F5, and they are making a wholesale change to F5 across the entirety of their estate.
I think it's a good example of the sort of pattern we're seeing as a result of some of these market forces.
Okay, perfect. You know, maybe turning to the current environment, we just talked about a lot of the tailwinds for your business in the coming years. But, you know, you've noted seeing stabilization in fiscal Q1, better than almost every networking vendor who kind of saw enterprise deterioration. Just what do you think explains some of that discrepancy? And, you know, is it tied to being tied to more multi-cloud investment or just having larger customers? How did you kind of take your results as we went through earnings season?
I wish I had a clear answer for you-
Mm-hmm
you know, on exactly, you know, what we're seeing that others are not. And I can't really speak to their businesses.
Yeah.
But I will say that, you know, we obviously, you know, when we talked about our 2023 outlook, gosh, back in October of 2022, we talked about our renewal business and our new business. And the renewal business largely did what we expected it to do, and the new business-
Yeah
was really hit last year. And we, you know, saw for the last couple of quarters some stabilization, which was nice for us to see. It's sort of what we baked into our expectations for the year-
Mm-hmm
—as well as our quarterly outlook at the time, and, that's what we've been seeing. If we take a look back at the history of F5, you know, there's when we've had these recessionary moments, and, you know, demand really comes down, it only goes for so long before people really have to make that next level of investment, as applications and infrastructure just require it. And so, that's what we're seeing in our business. I can't speak to everybody else's.
Okay. I mean, after we've gone through a couple of once-in-a-lifetime events over the past couple of years, either in terms of COVID or supply chain challenges, inventory digestion, just how are you gaining comfort in what the baseline level of business really is, you know, across systems, software, and services portion of the business, given, you know-
Yeah
... there's multiple different purchasing models?
So, you know, we're more and more, you know, over 70% of our business is now, really on a renewal cycle.
Mm-hmm.
Whether or not that's software subscriptions, whether it's maintenance within our services base, but a large majority of our, you know, revenue is coming from renewal sources, and so we're just not as dependent on new opportunities as-
Mm-hmm
... as others might be. The system side is still the hardest to, quote, unquote, "predict." And, you know, we, we have to. I just mentioned that, that 4-6 quarters of refresh cycle, we're hopefully getting to the end of that. We talked about in the last earnings call that, you know, the pipeline was increasing for the back half of the year, particularly on the system side. We actually have to convert that into bookings-
Right
... and, you know, more to come as we get through the year. But those are the opportunities that we see. In the software side, you know, this year, more than 60% is gonna come from that renewal base.
Mm-hmm.
We talked about, you know, double-digit growth into 2025 based off of that renewal base. And so, it- it's not all ratable, but there is more visibility that we see, you know, based off of the different consumption models that we offer our customers.
Okay. I mean, and just do you feel like you have started to gain a better view on what election tendencies are? You know, part of the advantage that you guys have is choice, but that can also be a headache for you on a forecasting basis. So-
Yeah
... you know, now that we're getting back to more of a baseline, do you have a better sense of how that's tracking?
We do, and we've got-
Mm
... you know, better metrics out there that we do track internally. You know, the last thing that I probably failed to mention is, you know, when we take a look at our customer base and what we are understanding of budgets going into FY 2024-
Mm
... the early read that we got in, calendar Q4, is that, you know, they were going to be relatively flat to last year. Now, last year was obviously down dramatically from where they had been in the past five years before.
Mm-hmm.
But at least they weren't going down again.
Right.
So, you know, that gives us also some comfort in the outlook. Now, you may say, "Okay, well, systems, you expect to do better bookings on flat budget.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's probably an allocation of what you can sweat for only how long, and maybe our time is coming for some of that refresh to happen, where our services, you know, have really benefited by having elongation of customer-sweating assets. But at some point, that converts over to systems bookings, which we would expect in the back half of the year.
Okay. Maybe you can just outline for investors just some of the puts and takes on the software line item.
Yeah.
I know there's a number of headwinds that you guys are kind of working through. But, you know, just how to think about the software growth.
Sure. So, I think about that in the three different consumption buckets.
Mm-hmm.
Perpetual, you know, has generally been about $100-$120 million, you know, in any given year. Some years it's more, some years it's on the lower end of that, but that's generally the range.
Yeah.
We don't expect that to change dramatically. On the perpetual side, you know, that's where we've got our split between the renewal business and the new business, and we had, you know, lower expectations this year on the new business than we did last. You know, and so we don't expect a ton of growth out of that this year. But on the renewal side, we just had a bigger base than we've had in the past, and next year we'll have even bigger bases. Some of the contracts are entering their third term of renewal. So, that's on that piece. On the SaaS and managed services side, that's what we split out for the first time-
Mm-hmm
... at the end of FY 2023. It's what we talked about from a revenue side, would be relatively flat for the next couple of years with some gives and takes. Now, the give is that, you know, our Distributed Cloud business is growing rapidly, off a very low base, but it's, it's nice to see. That is, you know, giving us benefit in terms of bookings growth on a ratable basis. On the take side, though, you know, when we evaluated, the managed services business that we had, and some of the SaaS business that we had, there was probably $30 million out of that $200 million that we said, "You know, that's not growing at the right rate. That's not got the right margin profile.
Mm-hmm.
We're gonna make the decisions to sort of, you know, end those businesses as those contracts come up over the next couple of years. And so we talked about that $30 million coming out of the base. And then there was another $35 million associated with our Silverline Managed Services business that we are migrating over to our Distributed Cloud platform. That will take a couple of years to build feature parity, particularly for some of the larger revenue ones. So it's gonna be a little bit more back-end loaded into FY 2025, but we're gonna end of life the Silverline product at the end of 2025 and try to migrate over as much of that $35 million as possible to Distributed Cloud. TBD on how that plays out.
Okay. You know, obviously, most people think of you as kind of a large enterprise customer base, but you, you do have a decent amount of service provider customers.
Yes.
It's been thematic over the vast majority of this conference. You know, just what are you seeing from service provider customers, just in terms of kind of investment cycles or when you expect some of that demand to return?
So as a vertical, that's probably been one of the more challenged in terms of-
Mm-hmm
sweating assets and really holding onto those dollars tight. We did talk about in Q1 that, you know, and on, in our software business, particularly Perpetual, benefited from a couple of those service providers. Making some, fairly large architectural decisions that, you know, had good revenue, for us in the quarter. But it was more one-off for those particular service providers that, you know, were making some of those, I would say, futuristic 5G-type investments.
Mm-hmm.
But that wasn't necessarily a broad trend across the industry, and we tried to highlight that this may be one by one, as opposed to, you know-
Okay
... the floodgates open for all service providers. I do think, that, you know, they've probably sweated assets as hard as anyone else, and so-
Mm-hmm
... that refresh cycle will come. I can't tell you whether it's, you know-
Yeah
... in the back half of the year or sometime in 2025, but I, I think there's only so long you can go.
Okay. You know, you've laid out targets not only for fiscal 2024, but fiscal 2025, in terms of mid-single-digit revenue growth and 10%+ of EPS growth. Just what parts of the portfolio gave you confidence to kind of lay out those targets, particularly just with so much macro uncertainty now?
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, largely, it was the renewal base under our software term-
Mm-hmm
... that we saw, coming due, and, that third term of commitment, where we have largely performed to the expectations that we've set in any given year or any given quarter-
Mm-hmm
... for what that renewal base is gonna be. You know, it's not beyond us to screw up a relationship, but we hope we don't.
Yeah.
And, you know, we just have much more of that business to come in 2025, which should lead to double-digit software growth and allow us to achieve that mid-single total revenue growth, with services holding in there and, you know, not necessarily expecting a ton out of new business for our systems side.
Okay, perfect. You've talked a lot about utilizing AI for internal purposes, perhaps, you know, more than many other companies I cover, you know, helping to improve OpEx and helping get back to kind of mid-thirties operating margins. Just what have been early success signs here, and just, you know, what are kind of the, the timelines you're looking at for some of that?
Sure. So I think, as Tom mentioned, we are like other enterprises and, you know, the early exploration phases of what AI can do for productivity. We've rolled it out to three core areas. Tom Services team is beginning to utilize it as sort of case deflection and much better knowledge management of, you know, all of the knowledge that sits across F5 for, you know, decades of-
Mm-hmm
... servicing our client base. We are using it in sales and marketing in some areas on content development, and we are using it, you know, as a co-piloting tool within our product development group, and starting to see some early benefits of that. But it is really too early to say, you know, when that's going to help margins dramatically. But it is something that we are employing and getting better and better as each day passes.
Okay. Are there any questions from the audience before I move on? Okay, perfect. I think, Frank, sticking with you.
Yeah.
Just kind of M&A had been something that you had been pretty active in, over the past couple of years. Now we're at the point where people can kind of see it.
Yeah.
But for a little bit, investors were maybe questioning kind of the M&A strategy. Just how do you see M&A as having a role in kind of the ongoing portfolio development?
Sure. So, you know, we did three large acquisitions over a relatively short period of time, you know, between the middle of 2019 and the beginning of 2021. And, when I came into the business in 2018, you know, there was a lot of skepticism around, you know, the long-term outlook for F5, because we had this huge base of private hardware on- premises that, you know-
Mm-hmm
... was effectively going away, as everybody thought every application was gonna move to the cloud, and it was just how quickly is that revenue line gonna go to zero, was the question. And, you know, from our perspective, we hadn't necessarily made the same level of investments in the late 2000s, early 2010s, that we probably could've and should've to catch the wave of cloud applications and the growth that it could become. I think since then, there has been a broader recognition across the market that we live in a hybrid world, particularly for the largest enterprises-
Mm-hmm
... and not every application is gonna move over. And what we really need is a centralized console of management that I can use, both for my on-prem as well as cloud, as well as edge applications, such that I've got a common security framework and management, you know, to provide the best possible application-
Mm-hmm
... performance and experience for the end user. And so, that's the reality of where we are today. In terms of M&A, we feel like we plugged those gaps.
Yeah
... with those three major acquisitions, and we've probably done four or five smaller tuck-in acquisitions, most of which we've talked about publicly, some that we have not, but they've all been sub-$100 million. And they provided additional security and other service capabilities for our Distributed Cloud platform. That's been the core focus and will continue to be the core focus. Not to say that we couldn't do anything major and transformational in the future, but, you know, our core focus is really with the portfolio that we've got today, and increasing its competitiveness through organic development.
... Okay. So, I mean, you've talked a lot about you need to kind of roll out a lot to the channel, you need to roll out a lot of just education to customers. You're continuing to kind of evolve the platform, yet you're showing operating leverage. And so is all of this just AI helps offset that, or where are your kind of investment priorities over the next couple of years?
Yeah, so, you know, we're very fortunate to have, you know, a legacy business that allows us to make-
Mm-hmm
types of investments in the next generation, and most of that investment has gone into modern applications as well as Distributed Cloud Services.
Mm-hmm.
That will continue to be the case. AI will continue to benefit us in terms of raising our operating margin profile, and yet still continuing to invest in those businesses to achieve the growth rates on the overall revenue base that we-
Mm-hmm
... that we expect and hope to achieve. But that's, we continue to look for efficiencies across the portfolio.
Yeah.
We're making large investments in another part of Tom's organization with our IT systems, that we're highly tuned to, processing, you know, hardware orders through our channel and now, you know, need to need to encompass many more consumption models with different revenue recognition.
Mm-hmm.
And so we will get better and better at that, with all of our internal systems as well, as it will drive efficiency. But those are the key areas of focus that allow us to make these investments and still drive operating margin performance.
And then just capital allocation. You know, you've made some changes over the years to be a little bit more shareholder-friendly. Just how are you thinking about capital allocation today?
So it really hasn't changed. I know, you know, we were fairly consistent of $150 million of share repurchase a quarter until we-
Mm-hmm
... acquired NGINX, and we knew we had some other acquisitions, and so we had to put a halt to that program. Once we finalized the Volterra acquisition, which has become Distributed Cloud, we said we are gonna resume our share repurchase program. We're gonna do $500 million over the next couple of years, and then 50% of free cash flow. And that's exactly what we did and have done. And so in 2023, I think we returned 58-59% of free cash flow. In this last quarter, it was almost 100% of free cash flow. And so we continue to be committed to returning capital, at least 50% of free cash flow, in the form of share repurchases to our shareholder base. That will not change.
Mm-hmm.
That has been something that we have said, you know, is one of our North Star drivers to getting to double-digit EPS growth on a compounded annual growth basis for the future.
Maybe just to finish up, you know, Frank, you have a lot of investor conversations. Just what do you feel like is the most misunderstood part when you talk with investors?
Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question. I think, more of the story is now understood, and we are-
Mm-hmm
... in that execution mode.
Okay.
So, you know, we've had a couple of years of missed expectations as we've gotten into Q2. The first year was really from supply chain issues and-
Yeah
... you know, last year was more of a demand environment type issue. And so, this year I, I feel like we've, we've set out a plan. We're on track to perform to that plan. We actually took up our EPS expectations at the end of Q1, based off a very strong Q1 EPS performance. And I think, you know, right now, especially after our strategy and product session in early February, more and more of the community understands the investments we've made, where the product is going, you know, our strategic outlook, but we that we're being encouraged by everybody, okay, execute against that plan.
All right. Perfect. Well, Frank, Tom, thanks so much for being here today.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.