Fastly Q2 Earnings Beat as Security Growth Spurs 2026 Outlook Hike

FSLY's Platform Strategy Drives Broad Growth

Network Services revenues increased 17% year over year to $133.9 million, accounting for 73% of total revenues. Management attributed the performance to higher traffic among its largest customers, along with a smaller contribution from live sporting events.

Fastly also said it is gaining share where performance is critical. The company highlighted major global sporting events that generated record traffic and cited customer wins tied to resilience, flexibility and consolidated edge services.

Fastly's Security Momentum Lifts Revenue Mix

Security revenues advanced 43% year over year to $41.7 million and represented 23% of revenues, up from 20% a year earlier. Management said DDoS protection and bot management grew at triple-digit rates, while its next-generation web application firewall continued to gain traction.

Other revenues, which include Compute and Observability, climbed 69% to $7.7 million. Compute demand benefited from customers building low-latency applications and managing artificial intelligence (AI)-related traffic, supporting a combined Security and Other annual revenue run rate of nearly $200 million.

Fastly's Platform Strategy Gains Traction

Management said customers are adopting more products on Fastly’s unified platform, strengthening cross-sell and upsell activity. The company highlighted triple-digit growth in DDoS protection and bot management, while its web application firewall continued to gain traction.

AI-generated and agentic traffic also remained a demand catalyst. Fastly noted that machine traffic requires real-time decisions around authorization, caching, throttling and blocking, supporting adoption across Security, Compute and Network Services.

The company expanded its product reach through a partnership with Skyfire, designed to verify AI-agent identities and enable transactions at the edge. It also released a C++ software development kit for Fastly Compute to support low-latency AI, gaming and other workloads.

Fastly also highlighted its collaboration with LALIGA on an AI-driven system that detects and stops pirated streams in real time. The project illustrates how the company is pairing content delivery with security and edge-compute capabilities.

FSLY's Customer Metrics Show Deeper Adoption

The last-12-month net retention rate improved from 113% in the first quarter and 104% in the year-ago quarter. The increase reflected broader product adoption and higher usage across a range of customers as Fastly expanded cross-selling and upselling efforts.

Large customer count was 624 at the end of the quarter. Average annualized spend per large customer was $1.11 million, reflecting broader use of the platform across delivery, security and emerging edge-compute workloads. 

The top 10 customers represented 37% of revenues. Revenues from this group grew 48% year over year, while revenues from customers outside the top 10 increased 12%. Remaining performance obligations climbed 38% to $341 million, with the current portion rising 44%.

Fastly Expands Margins & Operating Leverage

Non-GAAP gross margin expanded 680 basis points year over year to a record 65.8%. Management attributed the improvement to higher revenues relative to infrastructure costs and continued cost discipline.

Non-GAAP operating expenses were $93.7 million. Non-GAAP operating income totaled $27 million compared with an operating loss of $4.6 million a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $38.1 million from $8.9 million, while adjusted EBITDA margin reached 21%.

FSLY’s Balance Sheet Details

As of June 30, 2026, cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities and investments totaled approximately $337 million, up $7 million from March 31, 2026. Fastly ended the quarter with a positive net cash balance of $14 million.

Net cash provided by operating activities was $39.3 million, compared with $25.8 million a year earlier. Free cash flow totaled $3.6 million versus $10.9 million in the prior-year quarter, as infrastructure capital expenditures represented approximately 17% of revenues.

FSLY Raises 2026 Outlook, Sees AI as Tailwind

For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, FSLY expects revenues to be in the range of $184-$190 million and non-GAAP earnings of 11-13 cents per share. The company projects non-GAAP operating income of $20-$24 million.

Fastly raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $732-$746 million and non-GAAP earnings outlook to 50-54 cents per share. Non-GAAP operating income is expected between $88 million and $96 million, reflecting an operating margin of approximately 12% at the midpoint.

Management views AI-driven demand as a tailwind across the business. AI tool usage is contributing to traffic growth among some of Fastly’s fastest-growing customers, with the impact most pronounced in Security and Compute and also evident in Network Services.

The company expects growing machine and agent-driven traffic to increase demand for products such as bot management and DDoS protection. These offerings help customers distinguish authorized traffic from unwanted activity and govern automated requests in real time.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

Currently, Fastly carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some top-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector include Kimball Electronics KE, NVIDIA NVDA and Inuvo INUV. Each stock currently sports a Zacks Rank of 1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Shares of Kimball Electronics have declined 3.9% in the year-to-date period. KE is set to report the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 results on Aug. 12.

Shares of NVIDIA have increased 18% in the year-to-date period. NVDA is slated to report second-quarter 2026 results on Aug. 26.

Inuvo shares have declined 56% in the year-to-date period. INUV is set to report first-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Aug. 11.

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