Specialist
Former senior executive at Citrix Systems Inc
Agenda
- Citrix Systems (NASDAQ: CTXS) and its offerings, noting historical strength with Workspace platform
- Product and M&A actions seem to represent solutions searching for needs, including March 2021 Wrike acquisition
- Evolving competitive landscape – increasing importance of cloud software offerings and competitors in digital workspace and app delivery and security operations
- 1-3-year outlook – management changes in light of recent CEO departure and proposed PE purchase
Questions
1.
You mentioned you’d helped reorient Citrix around more of a subscription cloud focus when previously it was more of a perpetual licence orientation as part of your duties there. How would you describe Citrix as a business, and how has it evolved, particularly since you joined in 2012?
2.
How would you describe Citrix Workspace? You referred to it as the digital workspace platform.
3.
Microapps sound like one element of a primary platform or larger application. How prevalent would you say those have been when it comes to workspace deployments? Is that a major part of what those consist of? Is that something that’s still being learned about and adopted?
4.
What you would characterise as the 2-3 most important attributes or benefits of Citrix’s Workspace platform?
5.
Why do you think it’s so important to Citrix to have the proprietary security offering vs just working with a third party, which probably spends a lot more money on things such as R&D and customisation?
6.
What’s important to know about Citrix’s ADC [application delivery controller] and security solutions offerings? You referenced an interoperability across what the company is doing in terms of app delivery, security solutions and workspace.
7.
What do you think the percentage of revenue allocation would be between Workspace and the ADC business?
8.
You highlighted the revenue mix elements of Workspace vs ADC. How would you characterise the growth and margin profiles of those businesses? It seems there is much less in the way of growth and profitability on the ADC side. Is that fair?
9.
You mentioned remote access being somewhat novel years ago, but many of us learned during the pandemic that there’s widespread and easy access to cloud applications on an enterprise basis, which presumably makes Citrix less, not more, relevant. How does the company continue to operate and succeed when it seems cloud applications are increasingly prevalent and thus it makes it less relevant or necessary?
10.
It seems one of the major competitive strengths and differentiators was how Citrix could enhance SaaS apps’ security and provisioning features. Is that noteworthy?
11.
What are your thoughts on Citrix’s March 2021 Wrike acquisition? Does that make sense a year out?
12.
What are your thoughts on recent news flow that a PE firm was looking to buy Citrix and then combine it with Tibco? How surprised were you by this, and does it make sense to you?
13.
Many people think about what Tibco does in two buckets. One is data integration, so better ways to connect sources of data with applications. The other is analytics technology and the ability to look at that or other data and make qualitative assessments about its implications. Does that strike you as the type of business offerings that would dovetail well with what Citrix previously had?
14.
Citrix mentions as many competitors in its SEC filings as any public company I’ve seen. In workspace, it highlights VMware, Okta, Box and Dropbox. For the public cloud businesses, it notes Nutanix, Ivanti and a number of competitors to Wrike such as Asana, Atlassian, Monday.com and Smartsheet. It also references Adobe. What do you think the 2-3 most significant competitors are to the Workspace business?
15.
How do you think Citrix’s Workspace business stacks up against competitors? VMware is historically a virtualisation company, while Microsoft can compete on a couple of different fronts with Office 365 cloud offerings, as well as with Azure. Additionally, if you look back over time and ask people who know Citrix, “What’s your single most important partner?” I think they would repeatedly and quickly say Microsoft. Then there are the public cloud companies. How do you see things playing out in those buckets?
16.
Who are Citrix’s competitors in app delivery and security operations? I think the competitors are a smaller group and more targeted, but you’re talking about F5, Radware, A10 and Cisco. Is there a particular player who’s formidable in that area?
17.
What do you see driving future growth for Citrix, not accounting for the Tibco combination? Annual revenues have been flat to up 8% over the past five years. I think expectations are for similar performance through 2024.
18.
Do you expect Citrix to pursue potential growth drivers? Are there other things it could or should do from a go-to-market and sales perspective that could help support or actually drive more growth?
19.
Former CEO David Henshall was with Citrix for almost 19 years, and stepped down in October 2021. Bob Calderoni has been interim President and CEO. Do you have any thoughts on David Henshall and what he brought to the company? What does his leaving indicate about upcoming change and what changes could be made?
20.
What is your 1-3-year outlook for Citrix, and what is the company’s biggest opportunity and risk?
