F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV), a multi-cloud application services and security company, stock fell 2.78% (As on January 25, 11:48:34 AM UTC-4, Source: Google Finance) after the company  delivered mixed first-quarter financial results, beating expectations on earnings but falling short on revenue. The company’s net profit for the quarter fell from last year, totaling $72.4 million, down from the $93.5 million profit it recorded a year ago. Further, the company has announced that it has struck a deal to acquire a small, Silicon Valley startup called Lilac Cloud Inc. for an undisclosed price. Lilac Cloud is described as a provider of “innovative application delivery services,” and F5 revealed that it currently uses the startup’s content delivery network technology to power its F5 Distributed Cloud Services. The acquisition is expected to close during the next three months. Although the addition of Lilac Cloud is not expected to have any major impact on F5’s revenue numbers, Locoh-Donou said he was confident that the company will grow its sales by about 9% to 11% by the end of fiscal 2023.

FFIV in the first quarter of FY 23 has reported the adjusted earnings per share of $2.47, beating the analysts’ estimates for the adjusted earnings per share of $2.33. The company had reported the adjusted revenue growth of 2 percent to $700.3 million in the first quarter of FY 23, which is inline with the analysts’ estimates for revenue of $700.3 million. Global services revenue grew 5% from the year-ago period while product revenue declined 1%, reflecting 3% software revenue growth and a 4% decline in systems revenue from the year-ago period.

The company offered earnings guidance of between $2.36 and $2.48 per share, below Wall Street’s forecast of $2.50 per share. In terms of revenue, F5 forecast a range of $690 million to $710 million, the midpoint of which comes in lower than analysts’ $705.7 million consensus estimate.

Meanwhile, the company’s customers are focused on minimizing their spend and optimizing their existing investments. The company has recently launched F5 Distributed Cloud App Infrastructure Protection (AIP), a cloud workload protection solution that expands application observability and protection to cloud-native infrastructures. Powered by technology acquired with Threat Stack, AIP is the newest addition to the F5 Distributed Cloud Services portfolio of cloud-native SaaS-based application security and delivery services.