Harmonic Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
October 28, 2024

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Welcome to the Third Quarter 2024 Harmonic Earnings Conference Call. My name is Josh, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded.

Operator

I will now turn the call over to David Hanover, Investor Relations. David, you may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Harmonic's Q3 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. With me today are Niraj Ben Nattan, President and CEO and Walter Jankovic, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to point out that in addition to the audio portion of the webcast, we've also provided slides for this webcast, which you may view by going to our webcast on our Investor Relations website. Now turning to Slide 2.

Speaker 1

During this call, we will provide projections and other forward looking statements regarding future events or future financial performance of the company. Such statements are only current expectations and actual events or results may differ materially. We refer you to documents Harmonic filed with the SEC, including our most recent 10 Q and 10 ks reports and the forward looking statements section of today's preliminary results press release. These documents identify important risk factors, which can cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward looking statements. And please note that unless otherwise indicated, the financial metrics we provide you on this call are determined on a non GAAP basis.

Speaker 1

These metrics, together with corresponding GAAP numbers and a reconciliation to GAAP are contained in today's press release, which we have posted on our website and filed with the SEC on Form 8 ks. We will also discuss historical, financial and other statistical information regarding our business and operation, and some of this information is included in the press release. The remainder of the information will be available on a recorded version of this call or on our website. And now I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Nimrod Ben Mattan. Nimrod?

Speaker 2

Thanks, David, and welcome everyone to our Q3 earnings call. Turning to slide 3. Today, we reported record Q3 results that demonstrated our team's strong execution of our business plans. These included record total revenue and adjusted EBITDA as well as broadband and video segment revenues, which exceeded our guidance. Our broadband market leadership and product differentiation are stronger than ever, especially with the recent announcement of Unified DOCSIS 4.0 technology, reinforcing and expanding our competitive position.

Speaker 2

I will expand shortly on Unified. We have successfully returned the Video business to profitability through rightsizing and actions and revenue execution and we are focused on advancing our pipeline of new Tier 1 SaaS streaming and larger scale appliance opportunities. Finally, based on our considerable progress today, we are reaffirming our full year broadband 2024 revenue guidance and raising our EBITDA guidance for this business. In Video, we are also reaffirming our 2024 EBITDA guidance. Walter will discuss this guidance in more detail.

Speaker 2

Turning to slide number 4, to our broadband segment. We had strong quarter as we executed effectively on our key initiatives. Segment revenue came in at $145,300,000 representing year over year and sequential increases of 92% and 56% respectively, both exceeding our original expectations. The number of global customers deploying our COS solution reached 121, an increase of 16% year over year. This growth represents over 32,000,000 DOCSIS cable modems in operation globally, which is approximately 18% of the global market.

Speaker 2

We continue to expand and diversify our customer base in Q3, securing business with 7 new customers. This highlights the increasing demand for modernized cable network solutions and reflects our focus on continued market share growth. Our pipeline of qualified new customer engagements continues to expand and we expect this positive momentum to build going forward. The broader availability of unified technology to all cable broadband operators is key driver of our accelerated customer acquisition and diversification success. Additionally, we were pleased to see the recent announcement from Comcast and Rogers, where Rogers will deploy Comcast Access solution based on our COS virtual CMTS.

Speaker 2

We anticipate this deployment will begin to ramp up in the second half of twenty twenty five and can be an important contributor to our multi year growth opportunity. Switching over to fiber, we continue to gain momentum with our fiber to the home strategy. In Q3, we closed a record number of fiber deals with existing and new customers for both hybrid and pure fiber deals. Also, since our last earnings call, Harmonic has partnered with Tribal Ready, a company dedicated to empowering native communities to bring high speed fiber broadband connectivity to tribes nationwide in the U. S.

Speaker 2

This collaboration aims to bridge the digital divide for underserved tribal communities by leveraging our COS platform and high density OLT solutions. We also continue to gain traction with our OpenO and U strategy, which disrupts traditional vendor locked fiber ecosystems and make fiber more affordable for more operators. In addition to several successful customer interoperability on-site demonstrations, we are collaborating with half a dozen third party optical network unit vendors to qualify devices. These ONU partners are helping us drive stronger value proposition that is resonating with a growing number of fiber customers. Also to provide a brief update on our activities related to BEAT, We have aligned with our U.

Speaker 2

S. Customers pursuing BEAT funding and have put plans in place to provide BABA remote OLT product deliveries in 2025 according to the requirements. Turning now to DOCSIS 4.0, our market leadership and execution momentum remains strong with successful full duplex node shipments and deployments continuing at a steady pace, a trend which has continued into the Q4. Following the impact following the important news joint announcement by Broadcom, Comcast and Charter at the recent SCTE Tech Expo, Unified DOCSIS 4.0 technology is no longer limited to a small group of operators, but is now open to all cable broadband providers, a significant positive catalyst for the industry and for our business. Making Unified DOCSIS 4.0 available for all operators is a significant advantage for Harmonic, leveraging our uniquely flexible COS core and our successful scale deployments of full duplex nodes.

Speaker 2

Our early experience with Unified Technology enhances our leadership position. This combination of specification flexibility and Harmonics capabilities enables operators of all sizes and strategic approaches to confidently plan upgrades to their DOCSIS networks, boosting speeds and increasing reliability with either full duplex or extended spectrum options, both supported with Unified. Since the announcement of Unified for All just weeks ago, we've already received more than a dozen new requests to evaluate the technology and discuss deployment strategies. While Unified represents a critical inflection point supporting the mid to long term cable opportunity for Harmonic that we discussed during our recent Analyst Day, there will be short term challenges as customers and prospects around the world now plan their technology transition strategies. Specifically, as we begin to look ahead to 2025, we see both significant new market movement and share gain opportunities as well as new deployment timing challenges due to ecosystem integration requirements and new unified RF front end development.

Speaker 2

Walter will expand on this in his prepared remarks. We are also excited about Cericom's recent announcement of Unified Smart Amplifiers, which are expected to enhance the overall Unified ecosystem and accelerate time to market. In summary, our broadband business demonstrated our ability to scale rapidly to serve customer demand as we executed to the 2024 plan that we presented early this year. We continue to gain market share as we further expanded our technology leadership, positioning ourselves for sustained growth and competitive advantage. Turning to Slide number 5 to our Video segment.

Speaker 2

Total segment revenue for Q3 was $50,400,000 compared to $51,400,000 a year ago. Sequentially, segment revenue was up 10% and exceeded the high end of our guidance. This included SaaS streaming revenue of $14,200,000 which was up 13.1% year over year, Driven by strong execution of our rightsizing actions, the Video segment returned to profitability with greater than 10% adjusted EBITDA margin. In Q3, we secured a refresh project with a Tier 1 service provider using our latest XOS media processor, achieving significant space and power saving while improving video quality. Data center efficiencies were a key factor in the decision.

Speaker 2

We see growing pipeline of similar opportunities as demand for power, space and cooling optimization continues. With the new XOS platform consistently delivering these benefits for service providers. In our SaaS streaming business, we continue to grow the pipeline of Tier 1 opportunities, while expanding relationships with our largest existing customers through increased capacity and new services, such as our Silverside Ed Insertion solution. These opportunities would contribute to our revenue growth in 2025 and beyond. We've also successfully trialed our new in stream advertisement solution during live sports event, enabling us to offer this value add service to our customers and increase their monetization.

Speaker 2

This aligns with our 2024 IBC presentation in Amsterdam, where we showcased AI based solutions for automating live sports production and monetization, ideal for lower tier events. And these tools enable premium broadcast with automated highlights, live captions, multiple languages and ad insertion without costly labor. With that, now over to you Walter for a deeper discussion of our financial results and outlook.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Nimrod, and thank you all for joining us today. Before I discuss our quarterly results as well as our outlook, I'd like to remind everyone that the financial results I'll be referring to are provided on a non GAAP basis. As David mentioned earlier, our Q3 press release and earnings presentation includes reconciliations of the non GAAP financial measures to GAAP that are discussed on this call. Both of these are available on our website. Our Q3 results included record total company revenue and profitability that exceeded our guidance.

Speaker 3

Further, we surpassed our revenue guidance for both broadband and video. Broadband revenue was also a record for the quarter. In terms of profitability, our overall company adjusted EBITDA and EPS were all higher than the top end of our guidance range. I'll call out some of our Q3 highlights here on Slide 7. For the quarter, we reported total revenue of $195,800,000 a 54% increase quarter over quarter, EPS of $0.26 bookings of $171,400,000 and a book to bill of 0.9.

Speaker 3

At quarter end, our backlog and deferred revenue was $584,700,000 leaving us well placed for continued growth. Before we review our Q3 financials and provide detailed Q4 and full year 2024 guidance, I want to mention some highlights of our guidance. Regarding broadband, we are reaffirming the midpoint of our prior FY 'twenty four revenue guidance and tightening the range to $477,000,000 to $487,000,000 As we do each quarter, we closely evaluate the latest customer information, forecast and commitments just prior to our earnings call. So this guidance is based on our year to date results as well as our latest available information. At the midpoint of our FY 2024 broadband revenue guidance, we continue to expect revenue to increase 24% year over year.

Speaker 3

Additionally, due to our Q3 broadband EBITDA results and our outlook for the Q4, we have raised our FY 2024 broadband EBITDA forecast. Before going further, I'd like to discuss our outlook for 2025 broadband revenue. As Nimrod mentioned earlier, due to the recent market developments around unified DOCSIS 4.0 and the related ecosystem dependency including recent customer demand updates, we are seeing some customers pushing out their deployment timing plans thus creating a short term broadband revenue headwind in 2025. Hence, we will be revisiting our 2025 broadband revenue growth outlook in the coming months. However, this is mainly a timing shift and we expect these potential 2025 deployment delays to create a positive tailwind for us in the future.

Speaker 3

Our confidence here stems from several factors including our market leading position in FDX nodes and early experience with unified 4.0 technology, the expected growth acceleration of rest of market DOCSIS as well as fiber growth. With regards to video, we have now completed the restructuring actions that we previously communicated. Based on this and our most recent analysis of this business, we are refining our 2024 revenue video revenue guidance, still within the prior guidance range with a slightly lower midpoint. Specifically related to video EBITDA, we continue to maintain our prior guidance at the midpoint. As a result of the broadband and video guidance, we are raising overall company full year 2024 EBITDA and EPS at the midpoint of guidance.

Speaker 3

Turning back to this quarter's financial results on Slide 8. Total Q3 revenue was a record $195,800,000 up 54% compared to 127 $200,000 last year. This was above the top end of the guidance range we provided on our last earnings call. Looking more closely at broadband, Q3 revenue was $145,300,000 an increase of 92% year over year and again above our previous guidance for the quarter. In video, Q3 revenue was $50,400,000 also above our guidance.

Speaker 3

Video revenue included SaaS revenue of $14,200,000 up 13.1% year over year and representing 28.1% of segment revenue for the quarter. Video SaaS revenue growth continues to be driven by live sports streaming SaaS expansions and new customer wins. In the Q3, we had 2 customers representing greater than 10% of total revenue with Comcast representing 51% of total revenue and Charter representing 18% of total revenue. Total company gross margin was 53.7% for Q3 2024 which was above the high end of our guidance range and reflecting better than expected video segment gross margin. Broadband gross margin was 48.3 percent for Q3 2024, up 70 basis points sequentially and up 380 basis points year over year due to product mix.

Speaker 3

Video gross margin was 69% in Q3 2024 up 12 10 basis points year over year and 4 60 basis points sequentially mainly due to a large scale appliance XOS deal in the quarter as well as favorable product mix coupled with cost reductions. Moving down the income statement on slide 9, Q3 2024 operating expenses were $60,500,000 down 3.8% year over year. In the quarter, we also had an unrealized non cash foreign exchange loss of approximately $4,000,000 as a result of intercompany balances that we don't expect to settle in the short term. This is reflected in our other expense income line of the P and L and in our adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA for Q3 'twenty four was $43,400,000 also above our guidance comprised of $37,500,000 from broadband and $6,000,000 from video.

Speaker 3

This all translated into Q3 'twenty four EPS of $0.26 per share compared with $0.08 in Q2 'twenty four and $0.0 per share for Q3 'twenty three. We ended the Q3 of 2024 with a calculated diluted weighted average share count of 117,400,000 compared to 116,700,000 in both Q2 2024 and Q3 2023. Turning to the order book, Q3 bookings were strong at $171,400,000 As I mentioned earlier, the book to bill ratio for the quarter was 0.9 compared to 0.5 in Q2 'twenty four and 0.8 in Q3 'twenty three. The 3rd quarter's 0.9 book to bill ratio was due to decreasing order lead times in our broadband business. As mentioned in our prior earnings call, we've continued working with our larger customers to secure supply base on committed forecast resulting in customer orders with shorter lead times.

Speaker 3

As we've stated previously, over time, we expect our book to bill ratio to normalize and approach the historical benchmark of greater than 1. Turning to the balance sheet on slide 10, we ended Q3, 2024 with cash and cash equivalents of 58,200,000 This amount excludes restricted cash of $300,000 The quarter over quarter change in cash was mainly attributable to positive cash from operations of $8,700,000 related to our higher net income in Q3 net of $2,500,000 in cash restructuring costs in the quarter. In Q3, we made no share repurchases. The free cash flow during the quarter was $5,700,000 We expect our cash balance to increase again in Q4 based on projected collections and timing of material receipts. Turning to accounts receivable and base sales outstanding.

Speaker 3

At the end of Q3, twenty twenty four, DSO was 80 compared to 78 in both Q2, twenty twenty four and Q3, twenty twenty three. The sequential increase was due to the timing of sales in Q3. Our days inventory on hand was 73 days at the end of Q3 2024 compared to 116 at the end of Q2 2024 and 145 at the end of Q3 2023. Inventory decreased $10,200,000 in the quarter as we continue to shorten days of inventory between receipt and customer shipment and due to the strong sales in Q3. We do expect our inventory to increase in Q4.

Speaker 3

In terms of capital allocation when appropriate, we will strategically invest in building inventory as we've done in the past to meet strong demand. Regarding liquidity, in December 2023, we closed a 5 year $160,000,000 credit facility that included a $120,000,000 revolving credit line and a $40,000,000 delayed draw term loan. As of today, we have drawn down $115,000,000 on this credit facility. As mentioned earlier, we did not purchase any of our common stock under our repurchase program during the quarter. To date, we have repurchased $35,000,000 of the $100,000,000 approved under our repurchase program with $30,000,000 of that in the first half of twenty twenty four.

Speaker 3

As we said previously, the timing and amount of any stock repurchases will depend on a variety of factors including the price of Harmonic's common stock, market conditions, corporate needs and regulatory requirements. Given our strong balance sheet and liquidity resources, we continue to believe that we can opportunistically repurchase shares without impacting our ability to execute our long term growth plans. Also, as mentioned on prior earnings calls, we plan to prudently manage our balance sheet by maintaining overall net leverage of around 2 times or less and available liquidity of no less than $100,000,000 going forward. At the end of Q3, total backlog and deferred revenue was $584,700,000 Our strong backlog continues to demonstrate the demand we're seeing from our large broadband customers and growing video SaaS commitments. Around 55% of our backlog and deferred revenue has customer request dates for shipments of products and for providing services within the next 12 months.

Speaker 3

As discussed during our last earnings call as part of our go forward strategy, Harmonic's video business will be centered on driving profitable growth by focusing on scalable market opportunities, streamlining its operations and optimizing its cost structure. To align with this go forward strategy, as previously stated, we implemented a restructuring program to achieve cost savings in this business. These initiatives are now completed. We currently expect total restructuring related severance costs to be $15,700,000 for the 2024 fiscal year, nearly all of which has been recorded as of Q3 year to date. As previously stated, we expect to achieve approximately $18,000,000 in savings in FY 2024 from these and other actions and approximately $28,000,000 in savings on an annualized basis in FY 2025.

Speaker 3

These actions were necessary to better align the video business with our go forward strategy. With that, let's now review our non GAAP guidance for the Q4 beginning on Slide 11. For Q4, we expect broadband to deliver revenue between $160,000,000 to $170,000,000 gross margins between 53% to 54% due to product mix gross profit between $85,000,000 to $92,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA between $54,000,000 to $59,000,000 For the full year 2024, we expect broadband revenue between $477,000,000 to $487,000,000 gross margins between 49.6 percent to 50.0 percent gross profit between $237,000,000 to $244,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA between $118,000,000 to $123,000,000 For broadband, we expect to reach record levels of revenue again in Q4 due to the expected sales momentum we've been seeing in the second half of the year. For our Video segment in Q4, we expect revenue in the range of 45 $50,000,000 gross margin in the range of 64% to 66%, gross profit in the range of $29,000,000 to $33,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA to range from $2,000,000 to 5,000,000 dollars For the full year, we expect video revenue between $184,000,000 to $189,000,000 gross margins between 64.9 percent to 65.4 percent gross profit between $120,000,000 to $124,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA to range from $1,000,000 to $4,000,000 Turning to Slide 12.

Speaker 3

For the Q4 of 2024, we expect total company revenue in the range of $205,000,000 to $220,000,000 gross margin in the range of 55.4 percent to 56.7 percent gross profit to range from $114,000,000 to 125,000,000 adjusted EBITDA to range from $55,000,000 to $64,000,000 a weighted average diluted share count of 117,800,000 and EPS to range from $0.33 to $0.39 For the full year 2024 as depicted here, we expect to see full year 2024 results that are consistent with our year to date results in the Q4 guidance that I've already discussed in detail. The full year guidance displayed here is also included in our earnings press release. So respecting listeners' time, I will let everyone read this at your convenience rather than read it line by line here. In summary, our strong Q3 results reflect the substantial progress we've made this year in executing on our FY 'twenty four plan. This enabled us to achieve revenue, EBITDA and EPS results that surpassed all of our original guidance.

Speaker 3

We believe our broadband segment continues to be well positioned for future growth. In addition with the restructuring actions we've taken and the progress that's been made in video, we believe this segment will remain profitable in Q4. Thank you everyone for your attention today. And now I'll turn

Speaker 2

it back to Nimrod for final remarks before we open up the call for questions. Thanks, Walter. In closing, Harmonic delivered another strong quarter, which included record total company results and both broadband and video revenue exceeding our expectations. With our market leading solutions and strong execution of our business plans, we remain well positioned for continued future growth. Let's now open the call up for questions.

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from Ryan Koonce with Needham and Company. You may proceed.

Speaker 4

Hi, thanks for the question and congrats on the great quarter. The nice upside in broadband in the September quarter, can you explain was that primarily timing that you expected later in the year? And can you have any color you can provide on product mix as that might been shifting and driving higher margins? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Hey, Ryan, it's Walter. Thanks for the question. So first of all, with regards to Q3, obviously, we achieved higher than the expectation we set in terms of our guidance. And that was just based on delivery timing, capability to ship out product to customers. And as you've noted today, we've reaffirmed our full year guidance at the midpoint for broadband.

Speaker 3

So this is just a shift as we had seen it a quarter ago when we're looking at the second half, little stronger in Q3, maintaining the full year for broadband on the guidance. To your second question with regards to Q3 specifically on product mix, so certainly our products mix shifted slightly and hence the margin improvement in terms of the gross margins you're seeing in Q3.

Speaker 4

That's great. Thank you. If I could do a follow-up please. In terms of the kind of characterization of your Tier 1 customer deployments. What kind of color can you provide on how those have changed excluding Comcast, which is obviously in a strong growth mode?

Speaker 4

It looks like substantially all of your growth was coming out of the Americas segment. Any commentary you can make around some of the Americas Tier 1s moving into deployment mode?

Speaker 2

Well, we cannot mention specific customers. We indicated the percentage of business with both Comcast and Charter in the opening remarks. As far as other customers, there is certainly momentum of new kind of growing pipeline and more customers in that market segment. We indicated number of new logos that we won this quarter and our expectation that this will continue into the Q4 and beyond.

Speaker 4

Great. And any further color you can provide on your comments around 25? It sounds like there could be some stalling of growth in broadband as customers evaluate unified?

Speaker 3

Yes, that's correct, Ryan. In terms of the unified transition as Nimrod mentioned in the prepared remarks and I commented on for FY 'twenty five, it's premature at this stage for us to provide anything specific in terms of growth ranges for next year. However, based on the unified transition, based on what we're seeing from customer demand recently, that's the indicator in terms of next year. And so, at this point, we're not prepared to provide a number for next year or a range for next year. We're looking at various scenarios right now in terms of what that business is going to look like and obviously working with customers to bring together their budgets and work with them as they set their firm plans for 2025.

Speaker 4

Okay. So I assume Walter for some of these larger customers that go into a reevaluation mode, it could be multiple quarters of impact there in terms of the deployment plans versus previous?

Speaker 3

Yes, we could see timing. This is all a timing delay

Speaker 1

in terms of expectations.

Speaker 3

As Nimrod mentioned in the prepared remarks, this move to Unified is actually very positive for us from a market leadership standpoint, the opportunity to even gain more share at the node level. And I think that's the strong point in terms of the mid to the long term. I think in the short term, that's a potential challenge for us as we see customers reconsider their deployment plans, the deployment timing and therefore as we look at next year, we are being cautious about the expectation for FY 'twenty five and we'll be working on that as we sit down with customers and go through more detail in terms of their plans.

Speaker 2

And I think it's important to add 2 important factors. Number 1, the urgency for customers to upgrade the network has never been stronger. In the competitive environment that they have, we think that they will do everything possible to move forward as quickly as they can. That's one thing. The other thing is that competitively, we as I mentioned in the opening remarks, we feel very stronger than ever, I would say, and with Unified even stronger than that because Unified has the full duplex plus the extended spectrum and we're leading the full duplex in the market.

Speaker 2

So we feel very comfortable with that. At the same time, as we said, we certainly see that somewhat being delayed.

Speaker 4

Understood. Thank you both.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Ryan.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Frankel with Rosenblatt Securities. You may proceed.

Speaker 5

Good afternoon. I'll take another crack

Speaker 6

at the same

Speaker 5

question. If we step back over the last year, one of the big questions has been when will somebody other than your 2 largest largest customers really get going? So when you talk about this caution around the availability of unified solutions potentially slowing down growth in 2025, Are you implying that that affects everybody? Or is this caution around the notion that the other customers that have been anxious to get going may not be able to run as fast because of the lack of the availability of unified parts?

Speaker 2

So I think it's a combination of the 2. And if to be specific, we talked about ecosystem integration requirements as well as a new unified RF front end. So when you think about new customers that now can consider the unified and previously they could not, even if we had a deal in the making, many of them are asking to get kind of the details of what would it take for them to go unified. So that by itself is kind of causing a delay. They want to look at the economics of that.

Speaker 2

They want to look at the technology. This is the dozen requests that we got for evaluation. So I think that's kind of the second part of that, that I mentioned.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then kind of on a related factor, are you also implying that maybe at the same time we're seeing a shift for people to kind of go full force on DOCSIS 4.0 rather than what it seemed to be before, which was you had a group of customers that seem content with doing 31st.

Speaker 2

That's exactly right. Until literally 6 weeks ago, the Unified was limited to a small community of operators. Now it's available to everybody. When I say everybody, some of them were considering well, some of them were on the sidelines because they were kind of desperate to do something, but DOCSIS 4.0 was undecided. There is full duplex.

Speaker 2

There is extended spectrum and they did not even have access to the technology with Unified and Unified becoming available for all that solved that problem for them. And they certainly historically, they always liked to the cable industry is known for doing kind of enjoying economy of scale of one specification that everybody is using. That's true by the way also for the cable modems that they are using. So, there is definitely a group of operators that either didn't do anything or were down the path of doing 31 that now are saying, well, what does it mean to do unified? And this is really real time discussions that we have.

Speaker 5

All right. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets. You may proceed. Tim, your line

Speaker 1

is now open.

Speaker 7

Hey, good afternoon. Okay. Sorry about that. Good afternoon. I want to kind of stay on that topic.

Speaker 7

I think last quarter, you had talked about the expectation for broadband revenues to accelerate from 'twenty four growth rates into 'twenty five. I gather that's no longer the case. And I guess my question is, could broadband revenues decline in 'twenty five?

Speaker 3

So I'll take that, Tim. It's Walter. With regards to the prior comments that we had in the earnings call slides and that we had commented on during these earnings calls, yes, that no longer applies in terms of broadband growth accelerating further in 2025 based on the growth rate exceeding the growth rate of FY 2024, which right now at the midpoint is 24%. So, we've taken that out of the slides because of the situation that we've described this afternoon in terms of the unified technology as well as what we've seen in terms of customer demands. So, as I mentioned earlier in the response to the prior question, right now we're looking at a whole number of plans with customers.

Speaker 3

It's premature for us to give any specific revenue guidance for FY 'twenty five as we assess this for the next couple of months with customers. And to your point on what could it look like in terms of the most conservative. The only thing that I'll say based on doing some very conservative type of modeling and reviewing some scenarios in terms of very conservative scenarios is that we still expect our FY 'twenty five total company EPS to be above where it is today in terms of our guidance for FY 'twenty four EPS at the midpoint. But that is based on the most conservative scenario that we're looking at. But it's just too premature to provide any type of guidance range around FY 'twenty five.

Speaker 7

Okay. And maybe this is relevant to that last comment about EPS growth in a worst case scenario, if I may summarize. And that is on gross margin guidance, especially for Q4 in broadband. I assume that envisions a pretty significant uptick on the head end side with routers driving those margins into the 50s. Is that well, are there any other drivers, I guess?

Speaker 7

Would you view that as kind of anomalous and expect a return to the high 40s after this very strong kind of quarter exiting the year? Or how would you describe that gross margin

Speaker 3

outlook for broadband in Q4? Yes. For Q4, I can comment on the broadband margins. It's due to the product mix, COS specifically in Q4. That's what drives up the margin.

Speaker 3

With regards to FY 'twenty five, too premature to provide any more specific guidance around the gross margins considering we've got to look at all of the customer mix and what that's going to equate to in terms of the product mix for FY 'twenty five.

Speaker 2

But the uptick itself is something unique to Q4. We don't expect to stay at

Speaker 3

that level. Yes, that's right. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 7

Great. Appreciate that color. Last one for me. In terms of kind of the diversification of the business, in the short term, it seems like you're going the opposite way. I'm just making sure my I'm looking at this the right way.

Speaker 7

But as you look at kind of the broadband business, it seems like your 2 top guys are contributing something in excess of 80%, which is higher than it's been earlier this year. And I know perhaps you expected that ramp with these guys in the second half, but that would put your other customers sequentially down from an absolute dollar perspective. Is that something you expected?

Speaker 3

First of all, yes, Tim, so when we provided our guidance last quarter and had the call, we specifically said that our expectation of the top 2 was going to be significant for this quarter. And then we would see it start coming down over time. So it was not unexpected. I'm not going to confirm specific. You've done some math here just looking at broadband.

Speaker 3

You've got the metrics that we quoted here in terms of total company for the top 2 customers. So you have that metric already. And so it really isn't anything that we didn't expect. And in terms of our rest of market or the non top two customers, Nimrod highlighted earlier the number of customer wins we had in Q3, that's picking up momentum quarter over quarter in terms of wins. In terms of expectations moving forward, we expect the revenue for rest of world or the non top two customers to increase in the 4th quarter.

Speaker 7

Okay. Thanks very much.

Speaker 3

Okay, Tim. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Simon Leopold with Raymond James. You may proceed.

Speaker 6

Yes. Just maybe to follow-up on Tim's question in terms of the customer concentration. What are you assuming for scenarios for other customers? So I think you've disclosed Comcast and Charter for this quarter. How do you see the mix specifically in what's implied in the Q4?

Speaker 6

And then what are your expectations for concentration as you look out to the longer term, specifically other customers besides Comcast and Charter?

Speaker 3

Yes, certainly, Simon. So definitely in Q4, expectation is that the concentration of the top two will be less in that the other non top 2 customers are growing. That is our expectation for Q4. As I said on prior calls, as we look forward and obviously we're still reassessing now all of 2025, we continue to see rest of world growing in terms of the number of customers and the revenue and therefore the concentration metric will reduce on the top two customers as compared to the rest of the market. So that is an expectation we have going forward.

Speaker 3

It's no different than the expectation we had previously. However, we're still rolling through our 2025 to look at overall customer mix.

Speaker 6

And I guess in terms of the delays due to Unified, one of the things I'm a little bit puzzled by is, I think at the cable show, it sounded like the full duplex amplifiers are now shipping. So I assume and I'm wondering if this is a safe assumption that Comcast is basically moving ahead unencumbered because it had been waiting for full duplex, full duplex is now available. So it sounds to me that they shouldn't be part of the delay and I'm just trying to get a little bit of clarification around that idea.

Speaker 2

So we cannot comment specifically on Comcast. What we can say and this is a question you guys had last quarter, as far as the dependency that we have on amplifiers. And we indicated that in 2024 and certainly into the 1st part of 2025, there is enough of what's called the fiber deep markets that do not require amplifiers. As we go beyond that, and again, we cannot comment on availability of amplifiers, but what we can say that at some point we are and we said that before, we are dependent in availability and kind of level of maturity of amplifiers, FDX amplifiers.

Speaker 6

Okay. And then just to try to come back to the video segment briefly. That segment seems to have been weighed down by some macro factors that caused some hesitancy by that group of customers. Just if you can give us some update on how you're seeing customer behavior in the pipeline in that line of business?

Speaker 1

That's all

Speaker 6

I had. Thank you.

Speaker 2

There is no, I would say, material change. I think we are going, as we said, after refresh opportunities where aging equipment is up for kind of refresh, whether it's a space power, video quality, things like that. And I think we get our fair share and sometimes more on that. And on the streaming side, we're focusing on Tier 1 opportunities and growing our existing largest opportunities. This is where our strategy is right now.

Speaker 2

I totally agree with you that the segment at large is definitely being challenged.

Speaker 6

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from George Notter with Jefferies. You may proceed.

Speaker 8

Hi guys. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. You said, I think, ecosystem challenges was part of the issue here as well as the unified transition. When you say ecosystem challenges, what exactly was that about?

Speaker 2

So one example is and again, that was the feedback I just gave on our dependency on amplifiers. We can ship and deploy FDX nodes to a point and at some point we will be and last time we said that sometime in 2025 we will be dependent on amplifier. So this is something you can understand as ecosystem dependency.

Speaker 8

Got it. Okay. And I assume integration of the COS products with cable operator, back office networks. Is that still an issue? Is that part of the ecosystem comment or not?

Speaker 2

Not really.

Speaker 8

Okay, super. Thanks very much. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Nimrod Ben Nattan for any closing remarks.

Speaker 2

We appreciate your continued interest in Harmonic and look forward to updating you on our progress in the future. Thank you all for joining the call. Have a good day.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Harmonic Q3 2024
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