[May 12, 2014]

Rackspace Hosting Reports First Quarter 2014 Results

Rackspace^® Hosting, Inc. (NYSE: RAX) announced financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2014.

Net revenue for the first quarter of 2014 was $421 million, up 3.2% from the previous quarter and 16% from the first quarter of 2013. Net revenue for the first quarter of 2014 was positively impacted by currency exchange rates when compared to the previous quarter by $2.4 million and positively impacted when compared to the first quarter of 2013 by $6.6 million.

For the second quarter of 2014, the company is forecasting quarter-over-quarter sequential net revenue growth of 3% to 4.5%, resulting in net revenue in the range of $434 million to $440 million.

"Our first quarter revenue growth came in as expected and we expect growth to improve in the second quarter," said Graham Weston, Chairman and CEO. "We are encouraged by qualitative factors, including the thousands of new customers we added in the quarter, including one of the largest we've ever landed. We also added significant new workloads for existing customers including Alex and Ani, Appboy, Clarks shoes, Under Armour and SunPower. Each of these customers values our managed cloud approach and chose us over providers of less expensive unmanaged infrastructure."

Total server count increased to 106,229, up from 103,886 servers at the end of the previous quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA⁽¹⁾ for the quarter was $140 million, a 5.8% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2013. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 33.2% compared to 32.4% in the previous quarter.

The company expects Adjusted EBITDA margin to be in the range of 32% to 34% in the second quarter of 2014.

Net income was $25 million for the quarter, up 22.3% from the previous quarter. Net income margin for the quarter was 6.0% compared to 5.1% for the previous quarter.

Cash flow from operating activities was $142 million for the first quarter of 2014. Capital expenditures were $101 million, including $61 million for purchases of customer gear, $11 million for data center build outs, $9 million for office build outs and $20 million for capitalized software and other projects.

Adjusted Free Cash Flow⁽¹⁾ for the quarter was $40 million. Return on Capital⁽¹⁾ was 11.4% in the first quarter, compared to 9.6% in the prior quarter. Average monthly revenue per server was $1,336, compared to $1,322 in the prior quarter.

At the end of the first quarter of 2014, cash and cash equivalents were $314 million, and interest-bearing debt including capital lease obligations totaled $53 million.

On a worldwide basis, Rackspace employed 5,743 Rackers as of March 31, 2014, up from 5,651 in the previous quarter.

Rackspace Business Highlights

• Rackspace appointed Ryan Neading chief information officer. Neading will be responsible for the Rackspace billing systems, internal IT systems and tools, technology operations, operational metrics and interfacing with external suppliers and resource providers. Neading brings with him over a decade of leadership experience and specialization in the high tech industry. Prior to joining Rackspace, Neading served as the co-leader of eBay's development site in Austin.
• Rackspace launched its Digital Services Practice to provide digital marketing expertise. Rackspace Digital delivers expertise to help companies more effectively engage with customers via a website, portal/extranet, mobile app or online store. By working hand-in-hand with software platforms and system integrators, Rackspace Digital provides reliable, fully managed service to help ensure the customer's brand is never compromised.
• Rackspace ranked No. 26 on the Sunday Times "Top 100 Best Companies to Work for in London" list. This is the ninth consecutive year Rackspace has received this award. The Sunday Times recognized Rackspace for its attitude towards Racker training and personal development and reports that Rackspace employees love their jobs, have competitive salaries, and have opportunities for personal career development.
• Rackspace, along with Digital Realty Trust, Inc., broke ground on a new 130,000 square foot data center facility located in Crawley, West Sussex. The 15 acre campus will eventually consist of four data suites with 10 MW of total capacity. The initial outlay, which provides 6 MW across two data suites, is due to be delivered in the first half of 2015.
• Rackspace launched ObjectRocket, its NoSQL MongoDB Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), in its UK data center. With the open source-based MongoDB solution, Rackspace will broaden its portfolio to offer European customers a NoSQL DBaaS for big data applications. This offering will be built upon hardware optimized specifically for MongoDB and will be easily accessed and integrated into existing systems. ObjectRocket is a sharded and fully managed MongoDB service built with a set of tools and APIs designed to maximize uptime and reduce administration time - all supported by Rackspace Fanatical Support^®.

Conference Call and Webcast

Management will host a conference call to discuss the results starting today at 4:30 p.m. ET. To access the conference call from the United States and Canada please dial 877-246-4118, from the United Kingdom please dial 0800-496-0445, and from Hong Kong please dial 800-900-872.

A live webcast and a replay of the conference call will be available on Rackspace's website, located at http://ir.rackspace.com.

About Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) is a leader in managed cloud and founder of OpenStack®, the open-source operating system for the cloud. Hundreds of thousands of customers look to Rackspace to deliver the best-fit infrastructure for their IT needs, leveraging a product portfolio that allows workloads to run where they perform best-whether on the public cloud, private cloud, dedicated servers, or a combination of platforms. The company's award-winning Fanatical Support® helps customers successfully architect, deploy and run their most critical applications. Headquartered in San Antonio, TX, Rackspace operates data centers on four continents. Rackspace is featured on Fortune's list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning expected operational and financial results, long-term investment strategies, growth plans, expected results from the integration of technologies and acquired businesses, or the performance or market share relating to products and services; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements or assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include infrastructure failures; the deterioration of economic conditions or fluctuations, disruptions, instability or downturns in the economy; the effectiveness of managing company growth; technological and competitive factors; regulatory factors; and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013, filed with the SEC on March 3, 2014, and in Rackspace Hosting's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2014. Except as required by law, Rackspace Hosting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

(1) As previously reported in the 10-Q filing for the three months ended March 31, 2013, certain reclassifications have been made to prior period amounts in order to conform to the current period's presentation. For more information, refer to our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2014.

(1) See discussion and reconciliation of our Non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures below.

(2) Due to rounding, totals may not equal the sum of the line items in the table above.

(3) Non-cash purchases of property and equipment represents changes in amounts accrued for purchases under vendor financing and other deferred payment arrangements.

(1) Non-GAAP Financial Measures

Adjusted EBITDA (Non-GAAP financial measure)

We use Adjusted EBITDA as a supplemental measure to review and assess our performance. We define Adjusted EBITDA as net income, plus income taxes, total other (income) expense, depreciation and amortization, and non-cash charges for share-based compensation.

Adjusted EBITDA is a metric that is used in our industry by the investment community for comparative and valuation purposes. We disclose this metric in order to support and facilitate the dialogue with research analysts and investors.

Note that Adjusted EBITDA is not a measure of financial performance under accounting principles generally accepted in the United States (GAAP) and should not be considered a substitute for operating income, which we consider to be the most directly comparable GAAP measure. Adjusted EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool, and when assessing our operating performance, you should not consider Adjusted EBITDA in isolation or as a substitute for net income or other consolidated income statement data prepared in accordance with GAAP. Other companies may calculate Adjusted EBITDA differently than we do, limiting its usefulness as a comparative measure.

See our reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net income in the table below:

Return on Capital (ROC) (Non-GAAP financial measure)

We define Return on Capital (ROC) as follows:

ROC = Net operating profit after tax (NOPAT)

Average capital base

NOPAT = Income from operations x (1 - effective tax rate)

Average capital base = Average of (interest bearing debt + stockholders' equity - excess cash) = Average of (total assets - excess cash - accounts payable and accrued expenses, accrued compensation and benefits, and income and other taxes payable - deferred revenue - other non-current liabilities, deferred income taxes, deferred rent and finance lease obligations for assets under construction); calculated on a quarterly basis.

We define excess cash as the amount of cash and cash equivalents that exceeds our operating cash requirements, which is calculated as three percent of our annualized net revenue for the three months prior to the period end. We will periodically review the calculation and adjust it to reflect our projected cash requirements for the upcoming year.

We believe that ROC is an important metric for investors in evaluating our company's performance. ROC relates after-tax operating profits with the capital that is placed into service. It is therefore a performance metric that incorporates both the Statement of Comprehensive Income and the Balance Sheet. ROC measures how successfully capital is deployed within a company.

Note that ROC is not a measure of financial performance under GAAP and should not be considered a substitute for return on assets, which we calculate directly from amounts on the Statement of Comprehensive Income and the Balance Sheet. ROC has limitations as an analytical tool, and when assessing our operating performance, you should not consider ROC in isolation or as a substitute for other financial data prepared in accordance with GAAP. Other companies may calculate ROC differently than we do, limiting its usefulness as a comparative measure.

See our reconciliation of the calculation of ROC to the calculation of return on assets in the table below:

Adjusted Free Cash Flow (Non-GAAP financial measure)

We define Adjusted Free Cash Flow as Adjusted EBITDA plus non-cash deferred rent, less total capital expenditures (including non-cash purchases of property and equipment), cash payments for interest, net, and cash payments for income taxes, net.

We believe that Adjusted Free Cash Flow is a performance metric used by investors to evaluate the strength and performance of a company's ongoing business. Note that Adjusted Free Cash Flow is not a measure of financial performance under GAAP and may not be comparable to similarly titled measures reported by other companies.

See our reconciliation of Adjusted Free Cash Flow to Adjusted EBITDA below, as well as our reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net income provided above.

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