STOCK | 1/19/21 FRESH LOOK

ARISTA NETWORKS GREEN YELLOW RED INC. LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT (TICKER: ANET) LBIR Recommendation

Stock Price: $317.07 (1/19/21) Company Size: $22.7B Author: Janice Quek

Sector: Communications Company Rank: 162 Industry: Information Technology Equipment

Arista Networks Inc is a leading supplier of IT infrastructure hardware and software to cloud service providers and companies to power their datacenters and networks.

IN THIS FRESH LOOK WE’LL COVER: u Summary of the Business Arista’s revolutonary hardware architecture combined with its range of proprietary software ä solutions provides a compelling value proposition Grab-and-Go for companies operating in the cloud. THESIS u Recent Developments An investment in Arista is a play on Covid-19, slower industry capacity expansion and demand for modern network 400G delays have led to weak performance in infrastructure equipment driven by H1FY20, but management provided a more enterprise migration to the cloud. upbeat outlook ahead. Arista’s good competitive position, u Competitive Environment healthy pace of innovation and Arista is one of the leading players, but market differentiated product portfolio will share growth appears to have stalled. drive growth for the company and u Conclusions/Recommendations bring opportunities for TAM Arista is showing that business is improving, but expansion. cloud titan demand volatility will continue to be a risk factor until other product categories

contribute more meaningfully, likely in a few

years. We rate Arista a Yellow Light.

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Data as of 1/19/21 unless specified

Enterprise Revenue Fwd $2,298M 22.7B Market Cap: 25.6B Value: (TTM): ($2,222M) Fwd (TTM) 7.18x YTD Return: 9.12% RSI: 66.1 Price/Sales: (11.37x) Gross Margin Revenue Growth 64.08% -4.68% ROIC (TTM): 22.9% (TTM): (FWD, YoY): 200-day 52-Week High: 320.25 52-Week Low 156.63 233.75 Moving Avg.

EBITDA 721M CFO 875M FCF 865M

Insider Transactions: Insiders sold 868,971 shares in the last three months

management. Network developers have thus SUMMARY OF BUSINESS û redesigned hardware to run cloud networks efficiently. A report by market research firm Arista Networks Inc is a leading supplier of IT Global Market Insights expects the global data infrastructure hardware and software to cloud center networking market to grow at a CAGR of service providers and companies to power their 15% between 2018 – 2025, reaching US$45 billion datacenters and networks. The company’s by 2025. Arista estimates that based on its solutions comprise its Extensible Operating current portfolio in the data center and System, or EOS, a set of network applications, Cognitive Campus Network, its current total switching and routing platforms, as addressable market is valued at about $22 well as a suite of Campus networking products. billion.

Growing work in the cloud drives demand for Comprehensive, versatile hardware managed network solutions by single software layer extensible to all networks The benefits of cloud computing have made it very attractive for companies to operate their Arista’s networking solutions are built for the businesses in the cloud. Cloud computing needs of the cloud, delivering scalability, however, especially on a large scale with availability, programmability, automation and numerous connected devices, demands a visibility. Its products use multiple silicon different network architecture, one in which architectures, which allows it to build more legacy designs are unable to cope with products optimized for different use cases. efficiently. Fundamental structural deficiencies Arista’s portfolio of products is underpinned by of legacy network architectures cause high its Extensible Operating System (EOS), a latency and energy use, and lead to network software that manages the performance of all its outages. Legacy networks are also not routers and switches, unlike legacy vendors programmable, and difficult to integrate with which require multiple management tools that third-party applications for network add complexity and reduce stability. EOS is fully

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programmable and highly modular, and built to manage, secure and provide better visibility with advanced capabilities such as workflow to the network, expanding its total addressable automation and predictive analytics that is market gradually. The company maintains a industry leading. While much of its business is high pace of innovation, constantly upgrading in the datacenter, Arista has also branched out to its hardware and releasing new versions that serve the Campus network with its suite of extends the products’ use cases and Cognitive Campus solutions. It is still in the performance. early stages, but growing rapidly. Arista has also recently been adding and developing software

Source: Investor Presentation

Financial and Operational Metrics

Arista has achieved strong financial and however experienced its growth slowing in H2 operational performance since 2014, the year of its 2019, when management announced weaker IPO. Revenue grew at a CAGR of 32.8% between demand for its products as the industry FY2014 and FY2019. The company is GAAP net consolidated and “absorbed” inventory from prior income profitable and continues to grow EPS years. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the steadily. Gross margin for Arista is comparable to situation, causing sales to slow further. The next its industry, and operating margins are the highest milestone for Arista is mainstream adoption of its in its peer group, remaining steady despite 400G products which the company estimates volatility with its topline. Free cash flow margins would occur in the later half of FY21 and into FY22. are high, averaging 26% over the last 5 years. Arista

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made up another 37%. From a geography LB•LOGIC Facebook and Microsoft are standpoint, Arista saw its European business Arista’s largest customers, making up 23% recovering from Q2 and strength in Asia, but and 17% of FY19 revenue respectively. Any change in demand for Arista’s products rising infection rates, new restrictions and and services unique to these two continued uncertainty of an economic recovery companies will have a major effect on in the U.S. made business activity challenging, Arista’s revenues, as we have seen in FY19. which weakened the region’s performance. 75% of Arista’s revenue today is from the Americas, which led to large revenue growth declines for Arista compared to peers in the switch market.

For example, Cisco registered a 0.8% YoY RECENT DEVELOPMENTS decline in Ethernet switches, Huawei saw û revenue rising 18.6%, while HPE declined 2.3% Arista reported improved results in Q3, YoY. delivering sales growth of 12% when compared to Q2 FY20, but a decline of 7.5% on a year-on- year basis. Demand from its cloud titan category drove the improved performance, which continues to be its largest vertical at 37% of total revenue. Enterprise and financials combined

Source: Investor Presentation

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software and support renewals. The company LB•LOGIC Although the company is saw a record number of new customer logos in trying to diversify its revenue streams, Q3 from momentum in its enterprise category public cloud service providers (cloud and campus products. While supply chain titans) drive a substantial portion of sales, resulting in volatility and mixed results challenges eased in Q3, shipments were still when compared to industry performance. constrained, suggesting that Arista could have Considering the trajectory of Ethernet sold more during the quarter without these switch spending in the next few years in the industry where public cloud providers problems. will continue to contribute a large proportion of demand, we believe the Arista reported gross margin of 64.6% in Q3, volatility will continue, albeit less than within its guided range of 63% to 65%. Non- before due to its expansion initiatives in other product areas and launch of SaaS GAAP operating income was $231.5 million, or services (see Product Development a margin of 38.2%, while non-GAAP net income section). was $192 million, a decrease from $217.1 million in Q3 FY19. It generated $215 million in operating cash flows. During the quarter, the Financial and Operating Results company also repurchased $167.3 million of

shares as part of its three-year plan to purchase Arista announced revenue of $605.4 million, a $1 billion of shares, leaving $339 million 7.5% YoY decline when compared to Q3 FY19. remaining in its repurchase plan. Product (hardware) sales were 79% of total sales in the quarter, with the remainder on services,

Source: Investor Presentation

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resolution of its supply chain constraints. New additions to its network software and services, LB•LOGIC Despite quarterly fluctuations some of which are based on subscription with its sales performance, Arista has been able to maintain steady margins – an models, are expected to also expand revenue indication of good financial discipline and opportunities and bring stability to revenue execution. performance.

Within this context, Arista guided for revenue Product Development and Company Expansion to be between $615 and $635 million in Q4, or growth of 13.1% YoY. Non-GAAP gross margin Arista announced its acquisition of Aware is projected at 63% to 65%, remaining consistent Security, a Network Detection and Response with other quarters, while non-GAAP operating (NDR) platform technology firm that leverages margin is expected at 37%, which includes artificial intelligence and human expertise to continuing investments in R&D to support perform advanced threat hunting. Threat growth of its enterprise and campus portfolio. hunting and detection is a new capability as Arista is very optimistic of the growth of its Arista expands its offerings to include network campus sales, expecting it to double from $100 monitoring and observability software. As million to $200 million in FY21. companies upgrade and broaden their cloud infrastructure, their threat exposure increases, and a sophisticated, reliable algorithm that can û COMPANY MANAGEMENT automate and alert users of potential network threats is essential. Jayshree Ullal is the current CEO of Arista Networks. She is also its President and a Arista also expanded its campus product member of its board of directors since October portfolio with new platforms, such as the 750 2008. From September 1993 to May 2008, Ullal Series modular chassis and the 720 Series 96 port served in various positions at , fixed switch, which together delivers better Inc., with her last position as senior vice performance (5x more than nearest competitor) president of data center, switching and services for high-definition video, provides more group. Prior to that, Ullal was a vice president of resilience and is more secured. It also launched marketing at Crescendo Communications, Inc., its CloudVision platform as a fully managed Cisco’s first acquisition in 1993. She has also held software, now offered as a SaaS. various product and engineering positions at Ungermann-Bass, , Inc.

and Fairchild Semiconductor. Ms. Ullal holds a Outlook and Estimates B.S. degree in Engineering (Electrical) from San

Francisco State University and an M.S. degree in Management commented that Arista’s outlook Engineering Management from Santa Clara in FY21 appears to be much improved. The University. Jayshree talks about Arista’s value company believes that it would return to proposition relative to its largest competitor, double-digit growth in FY21 (~13% to 14%), Cisco, in this interview. supported by initial indications of cloud titan demand, growth of its campus products, and

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Arista was founded by Andy Bechtolsheim, competitive. In the industry, recent and Kenneth Duda in 2004. The developments have affected demand for three men were able to fund the company switches and routers. One, while enterprise themselves. Prior to Arista, Bechtolsheim had cloud migration has generated strong sales in IT co-founded in 1982 and infrastructure equipment, some companies have became its chief hardware designer. Cheriton co- chosen to build their own white-box solutions ie. founded Granite Systems, a company that their own equipment for better control of developed Gigabit Ethernet products, in 1995 equipment design specific to their operational together with Bechtolsheim. Duda was hired as requirements. This has reduced the need to Granite’s first employee. Cheriton and purchase off-the-shelf solutions with the key Bechtolsheim later founded another company, players. Arista’s management has however Kealia, in 2001. Between 1996 and 2003, all three expressed optimism that as organizations scale men held executive positions at Cisco, before and their workloads become more complex, leaving the company to start Arista Networks. some may eventually decide to switch to Arista became a public company in June 2014, vendors like Arista whose products have greater trading at the NYSE under the symbol “ANET”. functionality, and available in the market faster The company completed its first acquisition of than it would take for them to build internally. Mojo Networks in August 2018 for an Second, some companies are moving to public undisclosed amount. Mojo Networks enables cloud providers, or adopting a hybrid cloud Arista to provide secure, high-performance deployment model, affecting demand in Arista’s cognitive WiFi at cloud scale to enhance its new enterprise category. Third, in late 2019, the cognitive cloud networking offering, a solution industry experienced a slowdown in equipment that addresses transitional changes as enterprise sales as customers underwent a period of move to of Things (IoT) ready product absorption from their large wave campuses. The company is headquartered in purchase in 2017 and 2018. Before the industry Santa Clara, California and has offices in San could return to growth, Covid-19 occurred, Francisco, Vancouver, Bangalore, Singapore and weakening recovery as companies curtailed Ireland. It currently has about 2,300 full-time certain IT budgets and postponed infrastructure employees. expansion projects. Extended work-from-home arrangements have raised questions about future deployment models. Market research û COMPETITIVE firm IDC reported in its quarterly report on the ENVIRONMENT Ethernet switches and routers market that worldwide revenue decreased 8.9% YoY in Q1 Arista operates in a highly competitive industry 2020, and the decline continued into Q2. In Q3 as demand for ethernet switches and routers 2020, the industry reported growth of 1.9% YoY, grow due to enterprise cloud migration. Major reflecting better macro conditions. However, players in this industry include Hewlett Packard performance also varied by region in the Enterprise, Cisco Systems, Huawei and Juniper quarter, with strength observed in areas that Networks. Many are investing heavily in R&D were starting to recover from the pandemic, like or acquiring technology companies to expand China, Japan and Singapore. their product portfolio to become more

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Source: Statista performance operational capabilities. Arista’s From a product quality perspective, Arista team is also highly innovative, launching new continues to maintain its position as one of the products for new sections of the market at a fast top in the industry. Arista Networks ranks pace. Customer support is also one of Arista’s favorably among independent technology strengths relative to peers, and the company market research firms. The company has been received a high Net Promoter Score of 76 with an placed in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner’s average rating of 9.2 out of 10 in a 2019 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking for TechValidate survey of its customers. Finally, the 6th consecutive year in 2020, and a Leader in another attractive point for Arista is the lower Forrester’s Wave: Open, Programmable operating and capital expenditure costs of using Switches for Software-Defined Networking Arista’s products relative to its competitors, (SDN). Gartner reports that one of Arista’s making Arista’s value very high for its numerous strengths is its extensive portfolio of customers. switches, focus on automation and high

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Source: Statista Competitor Huawei has gained share steadily In terms of market share, IDC’s latest report over time as it positions its business to serve the estimates that Cisco Systems currently controls Asian and European markets. Asia, in particular the largest switch market share at about 49.9%, China, has shown tremendous momentum and followed by Huawei at 10.4%, Arista at 6.4%, demand growth for networking equipment as HPE at 5.1% and Juniper at 2.7%. Cisco System’s the country digitizes rapidly. The market share lead comes from its high visibility, a large and of smaller players (“Other” category) is also loyal installed base and deep global sales increasing gradually. channels and coverage, according to a Gartner industry report. Leader Cisco’s market share has been decreasing over the years as other players gain traction. Arista’s market share expanded quickly in the last 5 years, driven by growth in demand in North America. However, its market share percentage appears to have stalled, maintaining in the 6-7% range in the last 3-4 quarters when evaluated based on revenue.

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LB•LOGIC Arista’s relatively stable ethernet switches market share in the last few years reflects the intensity of the global competition from smaller players and Huawei’s growing clout. Although it remains one of the leading network equipment providers, much because of its product quality and performance, we think that Arista may be facing challenges expanding its business materially out of

the cloud titan vertical, and outside of the United States to grow its market share.

û TREND ANALYSIS: VALUATION Arista’s stock price and valuation appreciated its performance ahead. At a forward P/S of 7.18x, substantially in the last quarter of 2020 from Arista’s valuation is expensive relative to peers, more bullish market sentiment in the technology but its good competitive position and long sector and a stronger outlook for the company. growth runway ahead justifies current multiple Management’s guidance expecting revenue levels. growth in FY21 gave investors more optimism of

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Current FY Revenue Fwd Gross Revenue Growth Forecast Forward P/E Forward P/S Margin (%) Forecast (%) (Millions USD)

Arista Networks (ANET) -4.68% 2298 64.2 24.83 7.18

Extreme Networks (EXTR) 0.59% 953.6 60.4 16.05 0.65

Juniper Networks (JNPR) -0.70% 4414 60.3 15.08 1.88

Hewlett Packard (HPE) 1.07% 27272 32.3 7.30 0.5

Cisco Systems (CSCO) -0.93% 48841 65.2 13.41 4.02

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into the Campus, and adding new software CONCLUSION / û solutions for the network. These are good RECOMMENDATION efforts, but progress is still in early stages. We Arista’s Q3 results suggest a possible near-term continue to think that Arista has the potential to turning point for its soft sales performance that shine, but hesitate to upgrade our has been a trend for the company for over a year. recommendation due to the concerns Weak demand from its cloud-titan category, mentioned. Arista is rated a “YELLOW LIGHT”. coupled with the pandemic has weighed on Arista, but management’s outlook for FY21 is optimistic in returning it to double-digit growth. Investors however should take this guidance in the context of a lower comps throughout most of FY20, so an expectation for sales growth is not a given, but at least not unexpected. Industry reports have also shown that Arista’s competitive position while remaining strong, its market share has not been growing meaningfully. In this regard, we see initiatives to boost revenue streams, including expanding n Stock Chart for Arista Networks Inc. (ANET)

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EQUITY 0.94 STOCK: ANET | 1/19/21 FRESH LOOK n Performance Data 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 RETURN ON INVESTED CAPITAL (%) 19.2% 16.7% 18.5% 29.7% 16.9% 33.3% GROSS MARGIN (%) 67.1% 64.9% 64.0% 64.5% 63.8% 64.1% EARNINGS (MILLIONS USD) 68.9 119.1 183.0 422.4 327.9 859.4 YoY Earnings Growth (%) 231.6% 72.9% 53.6%. 130.9% -22.4% 162.1% REVENUE (MILLIONS USD) 584.1 837.6 1,129.2 1,646.2 2,151.4 2,410.7 YoY Revenue Growth (%) 47.7 3.9 -9.7% -11.3% 10.5% 97.5% n Valuation Data 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 SHARE PRICE (USD) 60.76 77.85 97.54 235.58 205.00 205.68 SHARES OUTSTANDING (MILLIONS) 54.5 71.5 73.2 79.0 79.3 80.9 MARKET CAP (MILLIONS USD) 3,981 5,303 6,852 17,364 15,943 15,538 PRICE/SALES RATIO 5.7 6.6 6.3 11.3 7.9 6.8

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