Akamai in the Spotlight

Since shifting my attention to the macro side, I've been mostly quiet on stock-specific thoughts. I break the silence for a few comments on Akamai's (AKAM) quarter, reported last night:
 

• Forget the estimates (which it beat), and the guidance for the first quarter, which was in line with or better than estimates. Akamai's content-delivery service continues to hum along; as content becomes ever more complex, its services are slowly becoming a near-necessity for businesses which depend on the Internet.
  
  
• The customers added and Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) were way better than I'd hoped for. On the call, I didn't grasp if the numbers included benefits from the acquisition of Acerno, but it really doesn't matter: If Acerno is included, then the ARPU is even more impressive, because new customers come in at lower-than-average ARPUs, which means that Akamai is up-selling rather well to existing customers. If Acerno is not included, then the net customer additions are the kind of numbers that would have been good in the bubble days.
  
  
• The company's balance sheet is growing into the "fortress" type.
  
  
• If cash earnings-per-share for 2009 shrink by 10% vs. 2008 (and it's likely they'll grow), the company still trades under a 10 P/E.
  
  
• I'm glad there were no questions about competition on the call, because I've said this a thousand times: For the type of services Akamai offers, the only competition is in-house departments. Other companies that pretend to compete with Akamai are fooling themselves.

If the market continues to tank, Akamai's stock will likely follow -- there's no escaping that -- but its business won't. It may slow, but it won't tank. Analysts are losing themselves in modeling shortfalls of a penny of EPS here, and half a percentage point of EBITDA margins there, while entirely missing the point that content delivery today is where commercial airline traffic used to be in the 1940s. Only Akamai need not worry about unions, the price of oil, and customer delays (pun intended).

I'll stick my neck out on this one once again (search the archives for my looooong history with Akamai): If there's one business to own for the proverbial long-term, it's Akamai. And it's not so bad for the short term, either. So to Mr. and Mrs. Analyst -- who scare people away from the stock at these prices -- you are missing both the forest and the trees.

Special Full Disclosure: I came into the numbers last night with more than 5% of my fund net long Akamai. In other words, I'm pretty much maxed out.

So, bullishness aside, I may well pare things down a bit if the stock ramps up today. It's called trading, it's what I get paid to do, and should in no way temper all the good things I said above.