Citrix’s CEO says revenue momentum accelerating

Fort Lauderdale-based global software company Citrix Systems changed CEOs last month, but it likely wasn’t prompted by sales or profits.

On Wednesday, Citrix reported a second-quarter sales increase of 3 percent. Net income from continuing operations was up 2.4 percent.

The second quarter “demonstrated a clear acceleration in the momentum of our cloud transformation, with a strong demand for Citrix cloud and our subscriptionbased services,” said David Henshall, recently appointed CEO and former chief financial officer. He said Citrix is seeing “double-digit growth” in deferred revenue and an acceleration in overall billings.

But Henshall told analysts on a conference call Wednesday that he and the management were “aggressively” working to lay out a 2020 strategic plan, which he said will be discussed on next quarter’s conference call.

Henshall said he wants Citrix to move faster to the cloud, or a network of remote servers that store data and offer secure communications for businesses. At the same time, he said, there are still “opportunities to run the company more efficiently.”

Quarterly revenue from continuing operations was $693 million compared with $674 million in the same quarter in 2016. Net income from continuing operations was $109 million, or 70 cents per share, compared with $106 million, or 68 cents per share.

Citrix, whose core mission is to enable workers to work anywhere on any device, conducted its first conference call with analysts after the resignation of CEO Kirill Tatarinov and appointment of Henshall as successor.

Tatarinov came to a “mutual separation decision,” according to the news release in July. Tatarinov replaced long-time CEO Mark Templeton, who left in 2015, not long after activist investor Elliott Management Corp. took a stake in 2015 that prompted Citrix to restructure and spin off parts of the business.

During the quarter, Citrix announced a partnership with Google to integrate its cloud with Google’s, allowing Citrix and Google users to operate applications via either cloud.

Calvin Hsu, vice president of product management at Citrix in Fort Lauderdale, said there was a “natural synergy” for Citrix and Google to work together on helping businesses transition their applications from on-site servers to secure remote servers.

Hsu said the alliance is likely to drive more subscription licensing for Citrix’s services. Citrix also works with cloud platforms Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, which Hsu says provides customers with flexibility and choice among the major cloud providers.

Citrix Systems is South Florida’s oldest technology company with 1,700 employees in the region.

Citrix stock closed Wednesday at $79.11 per share, down 50 cents or 0.63 percent in Nasdaq trading.