Shares in Fortinet Inc. rose slightly in after-hours trading after the cybersecurity company beat analysts’ predictions for its third-quarter earnings.

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, Fortinet reported revenue rose 19% from a year ago, to $651.1 million. Profit before costs such as stock compensation rose 31%, to 88 cents per share. Analysts had been predicting a 78-cent profit on revenue of $639 million.

Fortinet saw growth across the board. Product revenue rose 14%, to $223.8 million, while service revenue increased 22%, to $427.3 million. Billing rose 20%, to $749.8 million. Deferred revenue sat at $2.39 billion as of Sept. 30, up 24% year-over-year. And the company booked an operating margin of 19.5%, up 110 basis points from a year ago.

Fortinet reported strong growth in demand for its Secure SD-WAN, cloud and Security Fabric offerings. Revenue more than doubled from the company’s Secure SD-WAN. That’s a software-defined solution designed to leverage corporate wide-area networks as well as multicloud connectivity to deliver high-speed application performance at branch sites.

“The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and cloud migration efforts creating multiple edges that require protection,” Ken Xie (pictured), founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Fortinet said in a statement. “Fortinet’s security-driven networking approach protects these edges, whether they are at the branch, cloud, data center, home, network or WAN edge.”

The quarter was also notable for Fortinet’s acquisition of security-as-a-service startup OPAQ Networks Inc. for an undisclosed sum in July. OPAQ offers networking and security services with a platform that provides a cloud-based Secure Access Service Edge designed to protect an entire distributed network.

For the quarter ahead, Fortinet said it expects revenue in the range of $710 million to $730 million and adjusted earnings of 95 to 97 cents per share. Analysts had been predicting $707.6 million on earnings of 87 cents per share.

Investors reacted positively. Shares in Fortinet rose 2.2% after-hours.

Fortinet’s success with Secure-SD WAN comes after the company expanded into what it calls a network security operating system for multicloud, web applications, email and the “internet of things” in 2018. Xie spoke theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s video studio, at the time about the company’s opportunities given changing data protection needs:

Photo: SiliconANGLE