Limelight Surges Ahead

Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings), the largest pure-play CDN challenger to Akamai, posted its Q4 and full year 2010 results after the market closed, easily besting both their own guidance and analyst projections which were on the high end of that.  The fourth quarter is generally strong for this sector, but Q4 revenues of $55.2M were up 11% sequentially whereas analysts had averaged around 7%.  Adjusted earnings per share were $0.01, which a penny higher than expected, and EBITDA checked in at $8.1M.  Projections called for seasonally weaker Q1 revenues of $48-49.5M, which was pretty much in line, and full year numbers up 15-20% over 2010 which was on the high side.

Clearly Limelight is making some forward progress here, with their core CDN business growing at an annual clip of 21% with their newer cloud based and managed services also contributing well.  One wonders how much of their growth ahead will come from the Netflix traffic they deliver a sizable piece of.  With the economic troubles mostly behind us and traffic growth from video looming steadily larger every day, the CDN sector has to be feeling pretty good about 2011.

The company’s stock surged after hours, even after tacking on 7% during regular trading, and now seems to be trading up nearly 20% overall on the day.  There was a time not so long ago that the prevalent belief was that Limelight’s destiny was to be a M&A morsel in some carrier’s mouth.  Nobody has said that recently though.

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