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More top-performing CAPS members are singing a bullish tune on Internet content delivery firm Akamai Technologies (Nasdaq: AKAM ) recently, enough to upgrade it from its long-held four-star rank to a more formidable five-stars. A total of 2,467 members have given their opinion on Akamai, with many of them offering analysis and commentary giving more color to the recent optimism.
The company showed that its services still offer compelling value to its customers, as it reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings recently. Net income rose 22% and sales vaulted 16%, to $212.6 million.
Despite Akamai's robust gains, the sector is growing more competitive, with Limelight Networks able to snake some content-delivery business from Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) . Nevertheless, in the quarter Akamai still gained 50 new customers on long-term contracts, an 8% increase from a year ago. Akamai already boasts a strong client list of names like Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE ) , Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ ) , and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT ) .
The earnings release wasn't the only news boosting shares, though: The company earned an upgrade from Citigroup, which likes Akamai's expanding revenue opportunity as a market leader. It generated a 69% increase in free cash flow last year, which could become the norm, as it's already laid out the investment capital over the past several years for a network that's ready to produce cash. Investors also see its anchor position with a developed network as helping it to stay ahead of increasing competition from big dogs like Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN ) and AT&T (NYSE: T ) .
To see all the details of what the very best CAPS analysts are saying now about Akamai -- as well as other winning stocks they are picking -- head on over to CAPS and have a look. The community research and resources in CAPS are totally free, unlike analyst opinions reserved for paying clients.
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