Based on the aggregated intelligence of 170,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, Internet content delivery specialist Akamai Technologies
With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Akamai's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.
Akamai facts
| Headquarters (Founded) | Cambridge, Mass. (1998) |
| Market Cap | $8.2 billion |
| Industry | Internet software and services |
| Trailing-12-Month Revenue | $930.15 million |
| Management | CEO Paul Sagan (since 2005) CFO J. Donald Sherman (since 2006) |
| Return on Equity (Average, Past 3 Years) | 9.2% |
| Compound Annual Revenue and Net Income Growth (Over Past 3 Years) | 20.7% and 26.2% |
| Cash/Debt | $503.59 million / $63.56 million |
| Competitors |
Level 3 Communications Limelight Networks AT&T |
Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's) and Motley Fool CAPS.
On CAPS, 96% of the 3,067 members who have rated Akamai believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include BuiltByNoah and qp2.
Just last month, BuiltByNoah touched on the several tailwinds working in Akamai's favor: "Cloud computing, streaming video, and now with MacTV and others looking to get into online on-demand entertainment -- this is a long term win. Look for the stock to gain market traction and accelerate rapidly."
As the dominant player in the content delivery network (CDN) market, Akamai stands in prime position to benefit from ever-increasing global Internet growth. While it faces increasingly aggressive pricing pressure from telecom giant AT&T, and long-time network service foes Level 3 and Limelight, our community is confident that Akamai's lead will remain intact. With as many well-forged customer relationships as CAPS member qp2 highlights, Akamai certainly looks like the best bet in the business:
As the IT industry is relying more and more on web based solutions, demand for accelerators for the last stretch between the IPS and the end user is quite real. Most IT managers are not aware of this method of acceleration, the ones who are adopting and taking advantage of this game change technology is fairing really well, examples are, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, etc... all customers of [Akamai].
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