KeyBanc Sees Positive Signs For Akamai Technologies In May Data

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Contrary to widespread investor skepticism around the sustainability of Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM)'s growth and margin expansion, KeyBanc Capital Markets said its May data tracker indicates solid growth and potential upside to 2019 consensus estimates.

The Analyst

Brandon Nispel maintained an Overweight rating on Akamai Technologies with an unchanged $91 price target. 

The Thesis

Global visitors per minute rose 30.5-percent year-on-year in May, Nispel said in a Tuesday note. Although this is a deceleration from April’s 37-percent growth, it compares favorably with last year’s 28-percent jump in May, he said. (See the analyst's track record here.) 

The sequential deceleration from April may have been due to tough comps from last year — and the May data continues to indicate a high level of growth, Nispel said. 

Akamai's upcoming catalysts include the annual Edge World conference June 10-13, where Akamai will be hosting analysts and investors for the first time, the analyst said, and Akamai is a platinum-level sponsor of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) AWS' re:Inforce security conference. 

Just as Akamai’s enterprise security products are being integrated within the Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) Azure marketplace, a partnership between AWS and Akamai is possible as well, according to KeyBanc.  

Price Action

Akamai shares were up 1.74 percent at $77.24 at the time of publication Wednesday. 

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Photo courtesy of Akamai.