F-5 Networks (FFIV) earnings call on customer spend trends, NGINX and AI…“Our customers are still watching their budgets closely. As we look ahead, we are encouraged by several factors, including better predictability from customers, improving systems demand, and the fact that some customers are making decisions that investments need to happen now. We are cautiously optimistic that these factors signal an easing of the extreme customer spending caution that characterized last year, and in fact, we are seeing stronger underlying demand. We continue to see large enterprises adopt NGINX for their cloud and Kubernetes-based applications. As those applications scale, we are seeing our NGINX opportunity scale as well. In addition, customers are also leveraging NGINX for app layer security for containers. We are intercepting two exciting growth categories with Distributed Cloud, Web App and API Protection, or WAAP, and the emerging opportunity in secure multicloud networking. In fact, we have seen explosive growth in the number of attacks blocked by Distributor Cloud’s WAAP capabilities with the number of blocked attacks growing more than 100% in Q1 from Q4. AI will accelerate the growth in the number of applications and APIs. We are seeing the start of this already in the form of AI models and new AI-driven services becoming available from startups and established tech companies alike. We expect that as enterprises ramp adoption of AI over the next one to two years, that adoption will bring with it a flood of new enterprise applications that leverage those AI models and the APIs of the new AI-driven services. Customers also tell us that AI is driving demand for a comprehensive API security solution, inclusive of DDoS protection, bot detection, and data masking and leak protection. Second, AI-powered applications tend to be comprised of many different components and data sources, which are distributed across hybrid and multicloud environments. F5 is an AI enabler. Effectively optimizing, managing, and securing AI applications and the APIs that connect them, demands a blend of specialized expertise and capabilities that align seamlessly with our solutions portfolio. We are the application and API expert with a deep understanding of the needs of demanding applications built over decades.”

Corning (GLW) earnings call on Optical Communications market….“Longer term, we remain confident that Optical Communications market will normalize. We believe that the industry’s underlying growth drivers are intact, specifically, broadband, 5G, cloud computing and advanced AI. We will also benefit from public infrastructure investments to help connect the unconnected and bring broadband to a much larger share of the U.S. population. And from an order rate perspective, we are beginning to see green shoots in the hyperscale datacenter space. So we continue to expect BEAD funding really to start to translate into demand, beginning of it, sort of late this year. They are progressing with awarding the grants and it’ll just take a bit for those to turn into real programs.”

Manhattan Associates (MANH) earnings call on secular tailwinds and Shopify partner….“Additionally, and aided by secular tailwinds and the clear benefit of resilient, modern supply chains, roughly one-third of our total bookings were generated from new logos for the full year 2023. Our pipeline continues to be strong with solid demand across that product suites. Net new potential customers represent about 35% of that demand, and we have significant conversion opportunity. As we enter 2024 with over 85% of our on-premise customers yet to begin their migration to our cloud solutions. But in the SMB space and have gradually been coming up the stack, you know, toward the enterprise where we play. So that’s why, you know, we’ve started to see a lot more cross-fertilization of prospects and customers as they come up into, you know, kind of the real enterprise enterprise class versus, you know, us going down so much into SMB. We’ve had that conversation many, many, many, many times about our focus on both, you know, Tier 1 , Tier 1 and Tier 2 . But we really do think, you know, the combination of our advanced technology and platform and Shopify advanced technology and platform can really deliver some, you know, substantial and very effective and efficient results for, you know, our customer base and so forth.”

Johnson Controls (JCI) earnings call on future tailwinds….“But certainly, there’s some secular tailwinds as we look out into the next couple of years, refrigerant transition, ongoing price mix benefits, easier comps and then you have the transition, both in North America and globally towards heat pumps.”