Content delivery giant Akamai Technologies Inc. has laid off 400 employees, or 5 percent of its global workforce, as part of an effort to streamline operations.

Akamai Chief Executive Officer Tom Leighton revealed the move during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday night. He said the restructuring initiative, which wrapped up this week, was originally launched last year.

The timing overlaps with activist investor Elliott Management Corp.’s December announcement that it had bought a 6.5 percent stake in Akamai and hopes to see “wasteful spending” reduced. The hedge fund has a long track record of successfully pushing for major changes at tech firms.

At Akamai, Leighton said, the layoffs focused on “targeted areas of the business, most notably in areas tied to our Media business.” This division provides services that help companies such as online broadcasters optimize the delivery of video content across devices.

Akamai most recently bolstered its media portfolio in May by introducing a networking technology that can reduce stream latency and thus the risk of buffering interruptions. Since then, the company has been shifting resources to other areas such as cybersecurity.

“It’s important to note that while we’ve made reductions in some areas of the business, we are also investing in areas that can return greater value going forward,” Leighton stressed during the call.

One such investment was the October acquisition of Nominum Inc., a Redwood City, California-based provider of security software for carriers. The company’s tools are designed to protect Domain Name Servers and maintain the privacy of the customers connect to a telecommunication provider’s network.

Akamai announced the restructuring after posting fourth=quarter results that easily beat Wall Street’s expectations. The company saw revenues rise 7.7 percent, to $663.5 million, well above the average analysts’ forecast of $649.1 million. Akamai’s profit dipped from $91.6 million a year ago to $19.1 million thanks to some onetime charges, but it also surpassed the market’s estimate on an adjusted basis.

Akamai’s stock rose by as much as 8 percent this morning in the wake of the earnings call, but by the end of the trading day, they rose 1.3 percent, to $64.48.

Image: Akamai