F5 (FFIV) FY2025 results: revenue $3.1 billion, up 9.7% on the year

F5 sells the software and hardware that sit in front of applications: delivering them, keeping them available and securing them, along with the interfaces those applications expose, wherever they run, on a company's own premises, in a public cloud or at the network edge. It was incorporated in 1996 and is based in Seattle, Washington. The financial year ends on 30 September. Customers are large enterprises, public sector institutions, governments and service providers, with technology, financial services, transportation, education, manufacturing and healthcare the largest parts of the base. The business is managed by geography in three regions: Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Asia Pacific.

The three product families

F5 BIG-IP carries the core application delivery and security services and is built for traditional applications, on premises, in co-located data centres or in a cloud. F5 NGINX does the same job for modern container-native and microservices applications and the interfaces they expose, and is built on the NGINX open-source software that the filing says powers hundreds of millions of websites; it covers web serving, load balancing, proxying, API gateways and caching, sold as packaged software subscriptions. F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the software-as-a-service and managed services portfolio for customers who want it delivered that way, with a console that also gives BIG-IP and NGINX customers a single view.

What the cloud services do

Distributed Cloud Web App and API Protection is the security product, running on one policy engine and management console: a web application firewall engine also available on BIG-IP and NGINX, mitigation of distributed denial-of-service attacks from network through application layers as a managed cloud service, API security using machine learning, auto-discovery and anomaly detection, bot defence that analyses traffic with AI to build bot prediction models, and protection against account takeover. Distributed Cloud Multi-Cloud Networking is the connectivity side: Network Connect joins public and hybrid clouds, data centres and edge sites with unified policies, single-console management, multi-tenancy and segmentation, automating the configuration of native cloud networking and linking clouds site to site over a private backbone or the F5 Global Network, while App Connect does the same at application level across cloud providers and regions.

How it is sold

Software is sold as perpetual licences, subscriptions and usage-based arrangements, and as software-as-a-service and managed services on subscription or usage terms. Hardware systems are sold alongside, with modules that run independently or as part of an integrated solution on the company's own appliances. Global services cover maintenance, consulting, training and technical support. Selling is primarily through indirect channels in all three regions. The solutions are sold for web application and API protection, hybrid multicloud networking, enterprise AI delivery and security, application migration and modernisation, zero trust architecture, and readiness for post-quantum cryptography.

Who builds the hardware

Manufacturing is outsourced, primarily to Flex, which assembles, quality-controls and tests the systems at Guadalajara in Mexico and Zhuhai in China and also handles material procurement and fulfilment. Systems built in Guadalajara go to a Flex fulfilment centre in Memphis, Tennessee for distribution mainly to distributors, resellers and end users in the Americas and EMEA; those built in Zhuhai are distributed in Asia Pacific. Title passes from Flex to F5 and on to the customer when the goods leave the fulfilment location. The filing states that a sales and operations planning cadence gives Flex and other partners a rolling demand forecast, so they can plan raw material stock and line capacity. Components are a mix of commodity parts and custom items, sourced either by the manufacturing partners or by F5.

The cyber incident

On 15 October 2025 the company disclosed a security incident in which, in its own words, a threat actor maintained long-term, persistent access to F5 systems and exfiltrated certain files. The filing refers to it as the Cyber Incident and directs readers to its risk factors and management discussion for the detail.

People

There were 6,578 employees at 30 September 2025, over 99 percent of them full-time, based in 47 countries with 47 percent in the United States. None of the United States employees are represented by a labour union.

From F5's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 30 September 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 25 November 2025: read the full 10-K.