Infoblox Q1 Results Beat View, Names Jesper Andersen President And CEO

(RTTNews) - Shares of Infoblox Inc. (BLOX) shares gained more than 7 percent in extended trades Tuesday after the network automation company's results for the first quarter beat analysts' estimates.

The company also said it has appointed Jesper Andersen, a former executive of Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), to the positions of president and chief executive officer, effective December 8, 2014. He succeeds Robert Thomas, who announced in May 2014 his intention to leave the company.

Infoblox, based in Santa Clara, California, develops automated network control solutions.

Infoblox's first-quarter net loss widened to $10.21 million or $0.18 per share from net loss of $2.55 million or $0.05 per share in the same period last year.

Excluding items, adjusted net income for the quarter was $2.96 million or $0.05 per share, compared with adjusted net income of $7.07 million or $0.12 per share in the year-ago period. On average, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $0.03 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

However, total net revenue for the quarter increased 5 percent to $66.72 million from $63.52 million in the prior-year period. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $64.47 million for the quarter.

Total operating expenses rose 18 percent from last year to $60.99 million.

Robert Thomas, president and CEO of Infoblox said, "During the quarter, we made good progress in new customer acquisition and added some marquee names. The EMEA region also helped drive our performance and was up 14% year-over-year. Finally, both our security and private cloud offerings also performed well, with revenue up quarter-over-quarter."

Looking ahead to the second quarter, Infoblox forecasts adjusted earnings of $0.04 to $0.05 per share on revenues of $66.5 million to $68.5 million. Analysts expect the company to report earnings of $0.04 per share for the quarter on revenues of $66.77 million.

In a separate statement, Infoblox said it has appointed Jesper Andersen to the positions of president and chief executive officer, with effect from December 8, 2014. He will also become a member of the company's board of directors.

Andersen succeeds Robert Thomas, who announced in May 2014 his intention to leave the company. Thomas will remain with Infoblox for about four months as an executive advisor to assist in an orderly transition.

Andersen, a native of Denmark, is a networking and software industry executive with a track record of building large businesses at Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), Oracle Corp. (ORCL) and other technology companies.

Prior to joining Infoblox, he served in a number of roles at Cisco from September 2008 to November 2013, including as senior vice president for network management during his first three years at the company. In this capacity, he managed a team of more than 1,000 employees and was responsible for the development of the Cisco Prime portfolio of integrated network management and analysis solutions.

Prior to joining Cisco, Andersen served as senior vice president of application strategy at Oracle. Prior to that, he served as general manager and group vice president for tools and technology at PeopleSoft, as well as executive vice president of products for Pivotal Software.

BLOX closed Tuesday's regular trading session at $16.89, up $0.30 or 1.81 percent on a volume of 1.77 million shares. In after-hours, the stock further gained $1.24 or 7.34 percent to $18.13.