Tech

Akamai soars 17% after earnings beat, and CEO touts record gaming traffic due to Fortnite

Key Points
  • Shares of Akamai surge after the online content delivery network crushed estimates on earnings.
  • The company has found record traffic in the gaming sector for software downloads, such as Fortnite, says Akamai CEO Tom Leighton.
  • Higher quality video has also helped push its media and carrier division revenues by 7 percent year over year, he says.
Akamai CEO on earnings, security and Fortnite
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Akamai CEO on earnings, security and Fortnite

Shares of Akamai jumped 16.92 percent by Tuesday's close after the online content delivery network crushed estimates on earnings.

The Massachusetts-based company's technology allows for speedier video streaming, e-commerce transactions, and software downloads. It has more recently expanded into security products, where it saw a 37 percent increase in cloud-security revenue during the quarter.

Security is now about "a quarter of our revenue and running at $700 million a year," Akamai CEO Tom Leighton told CNBC's "Squawk Alley" on Tuesday. "The best part is there's a lot of runway ahead there as we bring our new enterprise security product to the market."

The company has found record traffic in the gaming sector for software downloads, such as Fortnite, and higher quality video has helped push up its media and carrier division revenues by 7 percent year over year, he said.

Leighton added the company has had four consecutive quarters of margin improvement and expects to add another point in the fourth quarter in route to "achieving 30 percent margins by 2020."

Akamai, after Monday's closing bell, reported third-quarter revenue of $670 million compared to the $664 million analysts surveyed by Refinitiv had expected. It also beat estimates on earnings per share by 11 cents, reporting 94 cents per share.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the year-over-year revenues for the media and carrier division.