(Reuters) – Cybersecurity firm F5 on Monday forecast full-year revenue below Wall Street estimates, warning that a recent systems breach that raised alarm about potential risks to U.S. and U.K. government systems would hurt demand for its services.
Shares of the company, which services most Fortune 500 companies in some capacity, fell 5.8% in after-hours trading.
F5 revealed earlier this month that hackers had “long-term persistent access” to certain company systems, including the source code for one of its key cybersecurity services. Reuters later reported that two people briefed on the investigation attributed the breach to Chinese state-backed hackers.
U.S. officials have said federal networks were among those targeted after the attack and have urged immediate action.
“F5 anticipates some short-term disruptions to sales cycles as customers focus on assessing and remediating their environments following the recent security incident,” it said Monday.
The company has not yet seen any impact on demand, executives said in a conference call following its results.
The incident primarily affected BIG-IP customers in two ways. Some had to quickly update to the latest versions after the incident was disclosed, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou said on the call.
The other was a small subset of customers who faced a limited data breach and were notified with details. Initial feedback indicated the data was not confidential, Locoh-Donou said.
F5 forecast full-year revenue growth of 0% to 4%, with any impact on demand expected to be most pronounced in the first half, before normalizing in the second half of fiscal 2026. That was below the average analyst estimate of a 4.8% increase, according to data compiled by LSEG.
It forecast first-quarter revenue of between $730 million and $780 million, including possible disruption from the U.S. government shutdown. This figure was also below the estimate of $791 million.
(Reporting by Nithyashree RB in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Anil D’Silva, Maju Samuel and Shilpi Majumdar)