Radware Ltd. 2026 Q3 Earnings Call

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Radware's third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Roy Zisapel, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Guy Avidan, Chief Financial Officer. A copy of today's press release and financial statements, as well as the investor kit for the third quarter, are available in the investor relations section of our website. During today's call, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from Radware's current forecast and estimates.

Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, impact from the changing or severe global economic conditions, general business conditions, and our ability to address changes in our industry, changes in demand for products, the timing and the amount of orders, and other risks detailed from time to time in Radware's filing. We refer you to the documents the company files and furnishes from time to time with the SEC, specifically the company's last annual report on Form 20-F as filed on March 13, 2026. We undertake no commitment to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statement is made. I will now turn the call to Roy Zisapel.

Thank you, Yisca, and thank you all for joining us today. We delivered a strong third quarter, achieving record revenue while accelerating our year-over-year growth. Revenue reached $84.4 million, up 12%, marking our eighth quarter of double-digit growth over the last nine quarters and reflecting solid execution across strategic priorities. Non-GAAP diluting EPS was $0.32 per share. Today, Radware is a leading cloud security platform company. Customers are increasingly looking for security solutions that can protect applications, APIs, infrastructure, and emerging AI environments through a unified platform, combining advanced security capabilities with fully managed services. This is exactly what we deliver. Cloud ARR reached $107 million, increasing 21% year-over-year, driven mainly by continued adoption of our security platform.

We see rapid growth in API security, and during the quarter, we secured several meaningful API security wins, including a large deal with a leading payment infrastructure provider in the Americas. API security was an important part of this competitive replacement, where we consolidated WAF, API, and DDoS protection on the Radware platform, demonstrating the value of our integrated approach. The rapidly evolving threat landscape further amplifies the need for our broad application security platform approach. According to our first half 2026 global threat analysis report, web DDoS attacks increased 110% year over year, while malicious web and API activity more than doubled. At the same time, AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery, shortening the time between exposure and exploitation, and increasing attacker automation. These trends increase the need for automated behavioral-based protection that operates in real time, which is at the core of our cloud security platform.

Beyond accelerating cyber attacks, AI is also changing how organizations operate. As autonomous AI agents become more integrated into applications and business processes, they introduce new security, governance, and trust challenges, creating new requirements for securing these interactions. To address these evolving requirements, we continue to expand our platform with new security modules focused specifically on securing new AI business environments. Last quarter, we introduced Xploit Shield, which provides payload runtime protection for new exploits discovered with traditional tools or by frontier models. It provides immediate runtime protection to customers while they assess and remediate newly discovered vulnerabilities in their application code. Recently disclosed critical vulnerabilities such as PHP2Shell and Node2Shell bring this urgency to life, demonstrating how quickly the threat landscape can evolve and why proactive protection is critical.

We are seeing strong customer interest in these capabilities and have already secured our first large Xploit Shield deal with a leading telecom provider in Asia. The carrier selected Radware as its primary cloud application security platform following a competitive evaluation with Xploit Shield serving as a key differentiator. This win shows how our AI-driven innovation can address evolving customer requirements, strengthen our competitive position, and drive broader platform adoption. We continue to expand our agentic AI protection offering with two new capabilities. First, MCP Server Protection secures the emerging integration layer between AI agents and enterprise systems, and we already have production customers using this capability. Second, Agent Trust Management or Serve AI enables organizations to safely interact with customers' AI agents by assessing their identity, intent, and trust, and controlling the actions they can perform.

Together, these capabilities extend our AI security strategy across three important dimensions: defending against AI-powered attacks, protecting the AI infrastructure organizations are deploying, and securely enable AI agents to interact with our customers' enterprise applications and data. We believe this greatly expands the total addressable market for our platform and further strengthen the breadth of our cloud security platform as AI becomes increasingly embedded in enterprise applications and workflows. Our technology leadership also received external validation during the quarter. IDC named Radware a leader in its 2026 worldwide web application and API protection platform assessment. We also received recognition from QKS Group, which named Radware a leader in its 2026 SPARK Matrix for DDoS mitigation, and the most valuable pioneer in its AI Maturity Matrix for web application and API protection. We truly have technology leadership in the core markets we serve, WAF, API, DDoS, and AI security.

While our cloud security platform remains a primary growth driver, our on-prem security business also continued to perform well. DefensePro X continued to benefit from the ongoing infrastructure refresh cycle as customers upgrade aging DDoS environments. With less than one-third of the end-of-sale install base refreshed to date and a strong pipeline ahead, we see meaningful opportunity from this cycle over the next several quarters. A good example of this momentum is the agreement we announced yesterday with a major global cloud provider to modernize and expand its DDoS protection infrastructure. Following a competitive evaluation, Radware was selected to significantly increase the customer protection capacity and performance while providing greater flexibility to scale. In summary, the third quarter was another strong quarter of execution. We accelerated growth, increased ARR, and continued to broaden our customer reach.

At the same time, we accelerated the pace of innovation, expanding our cloud security platform into new AI security domains with new capabilities such as Xploit Shield, MCP protection, and Agent Trust Management. Looking ahead, AI is rapidly reshaping the security landscape, creating new challenges for our customers and significant new opportunities for us. We believe our broader platform, strong innovation engine, and consistent execution position us well to capture this opportunity and deliver sustainable long-term growth. With that, I'll turn the call over to Guy.

Thank you, Roy, and good day, everyone. I'll review our third quarter financial performance, discuss the main trend reflected in the result, and conclude with our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2026. As a reminder, unless stated otherwise, the financial metrics discussed today are presented on a non-GAAP basis. Reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP results are included in the press release we issued earlier today and are also available in the investor section of our website. As discussed previously, SkyHawk is presented as a discontinued operating beginning the first quarter of 2026. Accordingly, the result I'll review today relate to continuing operations. Third quarter revenue reached a record $84.4 million, increasing 12% year-over-year. This marked a further acceleration in our growth rate and reflects solid execution across the business.

The quarter benefited from continued momentum in cloud security and demand for our DefensePro X in subscription and on-prem business models. Total ARR reached approximately $266 million, up 11% year-over-year, reflecting the continued expansion of our recurring revenue base. Cloud ARR ended the quarter at approximately $107 million, up 21% from a year ago. Cloud continues to be a large portion of our recurring business, representing 41% of total ARR, compared with 37% in the third quarter of 2025. This shift in mix reflect the continued adoption of our cloud security platform and support greater visibility into our revenue base. Looking at regional performance. We delivered a strong performance across all geographies in the third quarter, with each region achieving double-digit year-over-year growth. Importantly, the growth was broad-based and reflect healthy demand across diverse verticals.

In the Americas, revenue was $39.6 million, up 12% year-over-year, representing 47% of total revenue. On a trailing 12-month basis, revenue in the Americas grew 17% year-over-year. EMEA revenue was $25.6 million, up 12% year-over-year and represented 30% of total revenue. On a trailing 12 months basis, revenue in EMEA grew 8% year-over-year. APAC revenue was $19.2 million, up 12% year-over-year, representing 23% of total revenue. On a trailing 12 months basis, revenue in APAC grew 5% year-over-year. Moving now to profitability. Gross profit in the third quarter was $68.7 million, increasing 11% year-over-year. Gross margin was 81.4%, compared with 82.4% in the third quarter of 2025. Gross margin was mainly impacted by the foreign exchange headwind, product mix, and supply chain cost pressure we discussed in previous quarters. Operating income was $11.9 million, compared to $12 million in the same period last year.

The year-over-year comparison was primarily affected by the appreciation of the Israeli shekel against the US dollar. Excluding this currency impact, operating income would have been $16.5 million, representing 37% growth compared with the third quarter of 2025. At the same time, we continue to invest in technology and innovation to capture the opportunity emerging from the rapidly evolving AI market and support our future growth. Financial income was $4.5 million in the quarter, compared to $5.2 million in the same period last year, reflecting lower market interest rate and reduced cash balance following share repurchase executed over recent quarters. We expect these factors to remain a modest headwind to finance income throughout the end of the year. Our effective tax rate was 15% compared to 13.5% in the same period last year. We expect the effective tax rate to be between 14%-15% in the coming quarter.