Akamai Q4 strong; Apple renegotiation didn't hurt quarter

Akamai delivered fourth quarter results that were better than expected and said that renegotiations with a large media company (assumed to be Apple) didn't impact the three months ended Dec. 31.

The company, in the news over reports that Apple was going to build its own content delivery network, reported fourth quarter earnings of $80 million, or 44 cents a share, on revenue of $436 million, up 15 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP fourth quarter earnings were 55 cents a share.

Wall Street was expecting Akamai to report fourth quarter earnings of 51 cents a share on revenue of $422.4 million.

For 2013, Akamai reported earnings of $293 million, or $1.61 a share, on revenue of $1.58 million, up 15 percent from a year ago. The company ended the quarter with 3,908 employees and 147,468 deployed servers, up from 127,638 a year ago.

On a conference call with analysts, Akamai CFO Jim Benson said demand was strong across all segments. Benson also addressed the Apple deal:

As I mentioned in our last call, there were two factors that would play a large role in where we would land, relative to our fourth-quarter guidance. The first was the timing of the renegotiations with our largest media customer which did not impact the fourth quarter. The second was the strength of the holiday season which exceeded our expectations in every solution category and in every geography. Turning to our media delivery solutions, revenue was $207 million in the quarter, up 19% over Q4 of last year and up 10% sequentially. Traffic and revenue growth continued to be very strong across our video, gaming, social media, and software download customer base and particularly strong among our largest, most strategic accounts.