Vecima Networks Inc

TSX:VCM

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Operator]

Hello. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome to Vecima Networks First Quarter Fiscal 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Presenting today on behalf of Vecima Networks are Sumit Kumar, President and CEO; and Dale Booth, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call will begin with executive commentary on Vecima's financial and operational performance for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 results. Lastly, the call will finish with a question-and-answer period for analysts and institutional investors. The press release announcing the company's first quarter fiscal 2020 results as well as detailed supplemental investor information are posted on Vecima's website at www.vecima.com under the Investor Relations heading. The highlights provided in this call should be understood in conjunction with the company's interim condensed consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes for the first 3 months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020. Certain statements in this conference call and webcast may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding management's intentions, belief or current expectations with respect to market and general economic conditions, future sales and revenue expectations, future costs and operating performance. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict and/or are believe -- are beyond our control. A number of important factors could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, the current significant general economic uncertainty and credit and financial market volatility, including the impact of COVID-19 and the distinctive characteristics of Vecima's operations and industry and customer demand that may have a material impact on or constitute risk factors in respect of Vecima's future financial performance as set forth under the heading Risk Factors in the company's annual Information Form dated September 23, 2021, a copy of which is available at www.sedar.com. In addition, although the forward-looking statements in this earnings call are based on what management believes are reasonable assumptions, such as assumptions we may provide, to be incorrect. Consequently, attendees should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. In addition, these forward-looking statements relate to the date on which they are made. Vecima disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kumar to provide his remarks. Please go ahead.

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Good morning, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Fiscal '22 got off to a strong start for Vecima. I'll start today with an overview of some of the highlights from the first quarter. Dale will provide a more detailed review of our financial results, then I'll return to discuss our outlook going forward. To begin, I'm pleased to report that we grew revenue by 19% year-over-year to $32.4 million in the first quarter, anchored by expanding deployments of our next-generation distributed access architecture products to a growing base of customers worldwide. Our gross margin also strengthened to 48.5% from 42.4% in Q4, which is a significant achievement in a period of supply chain challenges. And we achieved adjusted EBITDA of $4.3 million, which nearly doubled what we generated in Q1 last year. Our strong financial performance was led by our Video and Broadband Solutions segment, where we increased first quarter revenues by 80% year-over-year to $24.3 million. VBS sales also grew sequentially 4% quarter-over-quarter even as we responded to continued supply chain challenges. Our next-generation DAA solutions accounted for about 75% of VBS segment sales, with Entra sales setting a new quarterly record of $18.1 million. That was up 246% year-over-year, and it was 9% higher sequentially than what we achieved in Q4. First quarter Entra sales would have been higher still if not for external freight and logistics issues. Specifically, we had some scheduled and in transit orders that our carriers failed to deliver in time to be included in Q1 results. Those delays impacted Q1 Entra sales by over $2 million. Drilling down on Entra sales a little deeper, our results benefited from our growing customer base. By quarter end, we were actively selling to 39 operators including some of the world's largest Tier 1s, and our global engagements have widened to 77 customers. Order size also grew with several of our customers either starting or continuing their shift to scale deployments. And our sales were derived from all across the Entra portfolio. While it was another particularly good quarter for our 10-gig EPON fiber access products, we also saw strong demand for our Remote MAC-PHY, Remote PHY and interactive video controller products as well. As you know, Vecima has the industry's broadest portfolio of cable and fiber broadband Internet access network technologies, which enables us to meet the full range of our customers' requirements and provide multiple varieties of DAA solutions globally based on any specific customer needs. It's been an important part of our success in the DAA market and we continue to expand our differentiated portfolio. Subsequent to quarter end, we announced the world's first commercially available generic access platform, or GAP node. This is a new technology that sets the SEPs standards for unified access with a modular platform supporting open ecosystem and the evolution of the broadband access network. GAP is a paradigm shift for the industry, both in terms of hardware openness and capacity delivered. Closed access ecosystems inherently limit growth by stifling innovation. Vecima's mission of enabling limitless broadband access is greatly enhanced by leading standards like we are for GAP. We also announced a new generation Remote MAC-PHY cable access module, marking the most flexible and highest capacity cable access platform available on the market. So our Entra portfolio just keeps getting bigger and better. And with it, our reputation as one of the world's foremost providers of the DAA network access technology continues to grow. Looking at other contributors to the strong VBS segment growth, in our commercial video family, it was another very good quarter for Terrace QAM with sales increasing to $4.8 million. That was up about 10%, both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter as our lead customer continued to expand its hospitality footprint. That helped offset the continued and expected tapering of demand for some of our legacy Terrace family products, including the TC600E as customers look forward to next-gen IPTV driven commercial video solutions like TerraceIQ. Turning now to our Content Delivery and Storage segment. While demand for our MediaScaleX solutions remained very strong in Q1, we continue to deal with supply chain logistics impacts as well as pandemic-driven project delays affecting our customers' operations and schedules. As an example, an order for a large IPTV expansion project at one of our customers was anticipated in Q1 and ongoing scheduling shifts led them to defer finalization of that project. While it's not unusual to have significant revenue fluctuations in the CDS segment due to the large size of orders and variations in customer project timing, we've seen more of it than usual these past few quarters. The truth is that global shortages, schedule changes and delivery delays are being felt all across our industry and sector. Vecima has been less impacted than some due in part to our foresight to predict market demand by leveraging our strong balance sheet, which supports our ability to manage inventories. But we're not immune to these influences and both our Content Delivery and Storage segment and our Video and Broadband Solutions segment have felt pressure due to demand growth. Even with our growth planning and build-out of robust inventories in preparation for strong volume growth, the sheer amount of growth and demand occurring for Vecima is eclipsing that. Turning back to the CDS segment. On another positive note, it was a good quarter for CDS services revenues, which represented about 2/3 of the segment sales in the first quarter. Services generally carry higher margins than products, so this also helped to lift margins in the segment and for Vecima overall. On the R&D front in CDS, we also continue to advance our MediaScaleX portfolio with further enhancements of dynamic ad insertion features and open cash functionality and 4K content processing. So some important achievements for the CDS segment in Q1. In our Telematics segment, the first quarter brought continued solid performance as our subscriber count hit an all-time record high, and we increased our engagement with municipal government fleet customers and our growing base of asset tracking customers, while achieving an excellent EBITDA margin of 35% in the trailing 12 months. We added 8 new restoration industry customers during the quarter, and we're now monitoring over 12,000 units with our Bluetooth tags in total. The Telematics business also did an initial rollout of the driver vehicle inspection report, or DVIR, for a large municipal government customer in Q1. The DVIR confirms that the driver has inspected the vehicle and identify any issues which must be rectified and it assists motor vehicle carriers in satisfying transportation regulations in the U.S. and Canada. The application is based on handsets or tablets and ensures that customers keep vehicles in good condition and provide a high level of safety assurance. In addition, that functionality creates a future revenue stream opportunity for all customers and municipal governments in particular. Overall, it was a great start to what we expect will be another growth year for Vecima. And now I'll turn the call over to Dale to provide more detail on our first quarter financial performance. Dale?

[Dale Booth, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Sumit. For the purposes of this call, we assume that everyone has seen our first quarter fiscal 2022 news release, MD&A and financial statements that are posted on Vecima's website. I will present the relevant numbers and discussions around overall results, market segments, operational expenses and the balance sheet. Starting with consolidated sales. For the 3 months ended September 30, 2021, we generated sales of $32.4 million. This was an increase of 19% over the $27.3 million in Q1 last year and a decrease of 8% from $35.3 million in Q4 fiscal 2021, primarily reflecting lower content delivery and storage sales. The year-over-year increase reflects the growth of the Video and Broadband Solutions segment, driven by our new Entra family of products. Within the Video and Broadband Solutions segment, we generated sales of $24.3 million. This was up 80% from the $13.5 million in Q1 last year and 4% higher than the $23.5 million last quarter as customers began their transition to next-generation networks using Vecima's solutions. Further deployments of our Entra next-generation DAA products contributed first quarter revenue of $18.1 million, up a significant 246% from the $5.2 million in Q1 fiscal 2021 and up 9% from the $16.6 million in Q4 of fiscal 2021. A shift to scale deployments and expanding customer engagements during the quarter were the key factors in this growth as multiple Tier 1 customers deployed our Entra Remote PHY nodes, Remote MAC-PHY nodes and 10G-EPON solutions across their networks. Commercial video family sales were $6.1 million, down 20% from $7.7 million in Q1 fiscal 2021 and down 9% from $6.7 million in Q4 last quarter. As expected, reflecting tapering demand for our legacy TC600 and TC600E products. This was partially offset by continued strong demand for our Terrace QAM platform as operators continued their commercial rollout for the current generation while preparing for the next-generation Terrace IQ platform. In the Content Delivery and Storage segment, first quarter revenues were $6.8 million as compared to $12.5 million in Q1 last year and $10.4 million in Q4 fiscal 2021. Segment sales for the Q1 fiscal 2022 period included $2.3 million of product sales and $4.5 million of services revenue. These pronounced fluctuations in content delivery and storage sales are typical due to the large size of orders and the potential for customer timing adjustments. In recent quarters, this has been further exasperated by supply chain challenges affecting both our and our customers' operations. The underlying demand for Vecima's MediaScaleX solutions remain strong, and segment sales are expected to regain momentum in Q2 and fiscal 2022. On a full year basis, we continue to anticipate high single to low double-digit growth for the Content Delivery and Storage segment in fiscal 2022. Turning to the Telematics segment. As expected, sales of $1.3 million in the first quarter were on par with the $1.3 million achieved in the same period last year, and down slightly from the $1.4 million last quarter. Gross margin for the first quarter was 48.5%, up from 46.2% in Q1 2021 and 42.4% in Q4 of fiscal 2021. The year-over-year improvement reflects a higher product margin mix, partially offset by continued foreign exchange headwinds related to a strengthening Canadian dollar and increased expediting costs related to supply chain constraints. Video and Broadband Solutions gross margin was 47.2% in the current year quarter. This was higher than the 43.5% a year ago and the 39.6% in Q4 fiscal '21. The stronger VBS gross margin reflects a higher margin product mix partially offset by foreign exchange headwinds related to a strengthened Canadian dollar and increased expediting costs related to supply chain constraints. Gross margin in the Content Delivery and Storage segment increased to 50.2% from 47.2% in Q1 last year and 45.1% in Q4 last quarter, reflecting a higher percentage of service sales in the product mix. In the Telematics segment, gross margin in the quarter decreased to 63.4% from 65.3% during Q1 fiscal '21 and 67.6% in Q4 of fiscal '21, reflecting higher product costs in the quarter. Turning to first quarter operating expenses. The notable changes year-over-year were as follows: R&D expenses increased to $8 million in the quarter from $6.3 million in Q1 fiscal '21, as we continue to invest in research and development to support the launch of new products. The increase reflects higher staffing costs, software licensing costs and amortization of deferred development costs. Until these new products are commercialized, development costs are deferred to future periods. Sales and marketing expenses increased to $4.1 million from $3.0 million in the same period last year. The increase in sales and marketing expenses primarily reflects higher staffing cost to support the increase in sales year-over-year. G&A expenses at $4.7 million in the quarter were on par with the $4.7 million in Q1 fiscal 2021. Total OpEx in Q1 increased to $17.5 million from $14.2 million during the same period last year. This reflects the increase in R&D and sales and marketing expenses previously discussed as well as the increase in share-based compensation as the second tranche of our performance share-based units vested in the quarter. I note that reported R&D expense in a period is typically different than the actual expenditure. That's because certain R&D expenditures are deferred until product commercialization. Adjusting for deferrals, amortization of deferred development costs and income tax credits, actual R&D investment for the quarter increased to $9.6 million or 30% of sales from $8 million or 29% of sales in the same period last year. This increase reflects higher staffing costs, increased software licensing costs and a general increase in overhead as we move our next-generation product families closer to commercial development. We reported an operating loss of $1.8 million in Q1 fiscal '22 as compared to an operating loss of $1.5 million in Q1 fiscal '21 as operating income from the Video and Broadband Solutions segment was offset by a decrease in contribution from the Content Delivery and Storage and Telematics segments. Net income for the quarter was $0.7 million or $0.03 per share. This compares to a net loss of $0.8 million or $0.04 per share in Q1 fiscal '21. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the first quarter with $17.9 million in cash. The decrease in cash in the quarter mainly reflects the buildup of inventory by $7.7 million in the quarter, other noncash working capital of $0.9 million, capital expenditures of $0.9 million and cash taxes on performance share-based units of $1.1 million. Working capital decreased to $41.8 million from $44.8 million at June 30, 2021. We note that working capital balances can be subject to significant swings from quarter-to-quarter. Our product shipments are lumpy, reflecting the requirements of our major customers. Finally, cash flow from operations for the fourth -- for the first quarter decreased to cash used of $4.5 million from cash provided of $3.4 million during the same period last year. The $8 million decrease reflects a $10.2 million decrease in cash flow from noncash working capital, and a $2.2 million increase in operating cash flow. Now back to Sumit.

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Thank you, Dale. Before I move to our outlook, I want to comment on some recent industry recognition for Vecima. At the General Session Spectacular at last month's SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, one of our industry's highest profile events Vecima was highlighted by our operators as a key strategic partner, enabling the next leap in broadband technology. At SCTE, we showcased Vecima's new generic access platform and cable and fiber access network advancements, describing how Vecima, together with leading operators, is working to enable the next leap in broadband, advanced speed, fidelity and service quality across broadband networks. We're driving the 10G future. As I've said for some time now, Vecima has emerged as a true industry leader in DAA and recognition like this at our industry's flagship event highlights outstanding. Turning now to our outlook. In our Video and Broadband Solutions segment, we anticipate accelerating momentum for our Entra products in fiscal 2022. We're exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on the vast opportunities in the distributed access architecture market, with the world's most complete DAA portfolio and a growing list of Tier 1, 2 and 3 MSO customers. Our confidence is further supported by a growing backlog of purchase orders and binding forecasts that are providing excellent visibility into strong demand levels going forward. We expect to continue growing both our sales and our share of the DAA market in fiscal 2022. And we're very excited about what we can achieve this year. I should add that long-term forecasts are a new development in our industry and one that's helping us better manage supply chain issues. The foundation of that is customer confidence in their network rollout plans. With increased visibility into demand levels, we can plan our inventory needs further in advance. That benefits both us and our customers. In our Terrace family of products, we anticipate continued demand for the current generation TerraceQAM, making the way for the long-term migration to the next-generation Terrace IQ, alongside the overall network transition to IPTV. Looking at the Content Delivery and Storage segment, we're anticipating measured growth in fiscal 2022 despite the rollout delays at the start of the year. We're already regaining sales momentum in Q2. And in our Telematics business, we expect consistent incremental growth from the fleet tracking market and increasing demand for our new removable asset tracking services. Again, I want to caution that the global supply chain disruptions could continue to interfere with timely order delivery, while also increasing expedite costs and putting some pressure on our margins. Overall, however, we anticipate a strong year for Vecima as our next-generation solutions gain even more momentum. We remain highly confident in our market position and in Vecima's ability to capture the major multiyear opportunities in these fast-growing DAA and IPTV markets. That concludes our formal comments for today. We'd now be happy to take questions. Operator?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Jim Byrne with Acumen.

[Jim Byrne, Equity Research Analyst]

I just was hoping -- you've certainly answered a lot of my previous questions here. But you quantified VBS impact due to some timing and logistics issues. Maybe if you're willing to quantify that on the CDS side from the first quarter, that would be super helpful.

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Yes. I think on the CDS side, as I worked to highlight, there was maybe a little bit of a second order effect in the sense that our customers, of course, these projects are driven by not only our products, but by a series of interoperable equipment such as customer presence equipment and whatnot. So the timing adjustments that we saw were a few factors, the pandemic delays in scheduling new project rollout as well as perhaps some second order supply chain movements from partners of large in the ecosystem. And maybe less influenced by logistics and freight than what we saw in the Entra and VBS.

[Jim Byrne, Equity Research Analyst]

Okay. That's great. And then I noticed some of your peers have reported pretty dramatic declines in their gross margins in the quarter. You guys seem to be relatively immune, certainly relative to our expectations. Maybe you could just comment on how you're able to achieve that? And do you think you can still sustain at these levels?

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Yes, yes. So I think as we saw a nice kind of bounce up in gross margin over the quarter, and it was driven by a few factors. First and foremost, the VBS segment growth and powered by Entra that have led us to an increase in gross profit, with our relatively fixed manufacturing capacity and cost of goods sold and whatnot, those fixed costs, I would say, were spread out further with respect to our margins in VBS. That was one factor. And there was general -- another factor I would say is that in the fourth quarter, we have started talking about we saw these expedite costs starting to come into the fold. We may have point in time, had a little bit more influence of those expedite costs in the fourth quarter. So -- and another factor I think is mix, of course, as always. We had increase in Remote MAC-PHY penetration in the first quarter. That was a positive influence on mix. And the fiber access products continue to have a strong proportion of the intra-family revenues in the first quarter. And as we've said, that's favorable to our margin mix profile as well. And even with CDS, although we had the impacts of the sales project delays to the top line, one thing I highlighted is services margin was a higher component of CDS sales in the first quarter, and services margins are generally north. So I think lots of positive influences that can demonstrate what we're able to do even in the midst of managing supply chain very, very strongly. We're putting a lot of the focus and, frankly, investment in that. We think about things like expedite costs. So looking forward, with demand profile growing the way it is and building, especially in the DAA products and the Entra lines and VBS, we're still being relatively aggressive in what we're trying to do to manage the supply chain. I think, like you said, others have been influenced quite a bit by this global constraint and then we continue to maintain a posture of investment. So that we expect we'll continue to have the potential for overall expedite cost-driven headwinds in fiscal '22. But the mix, as you see, is also transitioning in parallel. So we expect -- our target range is 48% to 52%. We landed very nicely in that range in the first quarter. But across the year, we're still being cautious to suggest that we're going to be a couple of points below as we manage the supply chain.

[Jim Byrne, Equity Research Analyst]

Okay, that's excellent. And then you talked about your expanded product portfolio. Where does that leave future acquisitions? And maybe just touch on your M&A pipeline and what you're seeing out there right now?

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Yes. So we've made some great strides after we've consolidated and I've been talking about this over the last few quarters since we acquired the [ cable view ] from Nokia last year that we've consolidated engineering teams, and we're effectively got a very focused, and DAA specifically focused, engineering team through the merged kind of organization that allows us to lead in technology development. And you've seen that in some of the stuff I talked about with our GAP node and our new MAC-PHY module and all these factors that are helping to move us. So that the new organic organization has the opportunity to be a market leader, and I believe we're demonstrating that. But at the same time, our philosophy remains on M&A that we're in a great position to be the consolidator if other vendors are changing focus, we're positioned well. We have customers that, given our standing DAA place us and good standing to be a home for any assets, that are changing hand. And there might be some incremental technologies that can further advance us. But we've got this core pillar of the broadest portfolio of DAA cable and fiber access products today. And I don't think there's any material technology wise that we need to drive. I look at it more as a consolidation movement as we go forward.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Jesse Pytlak with Cormark Securities.

[Jesse Pytlak, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

First, maybe if we could just start on the investment in the strategic inventory that you made this quarter. Can you just maybe comment -- were these investments related more to inventory for Entra products? Or is this more on the CDS side of the product suite?

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

I think overall, investments were blended across the 2 segments. When we think about the context of managing supply chain constraints, I think that and the VBS side is more driven in that direction. Of course, on the CDS side, I mentioned a large customer project that didn't finalize in the quarter, while we may have expected it to. So that may have been a little bit more of a normal course inventory preparation for that project but that influenced our CDS component of that inventory increase. But the bulk of it is looking at that -- getting ahead of supply chain on VBS. And of course, when we have the logistics issues at the end of the quarter, those products that had shipped, left the door and, were in transit and our carriers didn't meet the commitments they made on dates for delivery, those remained in inventory.

[Jesse Pytlak, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Okay. And then maybe just as a segue in terms of the actual delayed shipments that you experienced have they been resolved now? Can you confirm that the shipments has been delivered as expected? And was this really more of just an isolated event? Or is this something that could become a bit more persistent?

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Yes, it was a little timing driven and what happened, normally carriers have been in our entire history, very good at achieving their commitments. And when we were at the end of the first quarter, at the end of September, we had some that didn't make those commitments for what appeared to be the first time and that we can remember in recent history. So of course, those shipments did mature subsequent to quarter end, they were in transit -- and a few days. I think that we're all aware of the macro factors that are trickling into logistics and some of the port delays and things like that, that are happening. So it is something that we're being more active in getting ahead on the managing. And then while we're earlier in the quarter, it's not that we weren't before, but that was the first time we had a material impact in this domain. So we intend to -- in addition to all the other focus we're putting on supply chain logistics that has popped up is something that we're going to manage aggressively going forward.

[Jesse Pytlak, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Okay. Yes, I can definitely appreciate the kind of the broader macro issues that you're contending with. And then just lastly, maybe on cable and fiber access. Can you just maybe comment on where you might be seeing budget-wise from your Tier 1s just kind of as we enter calendar '22 year? You obviously have having some excellent visibility into demand. And just can you maybe talk about how that budgeting process is kind of shaping up relative to maybe the prior year?

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Yes. I think consistent with some of the themes that emerged to drive our Entra sales up significantly to $46 million plus in fiscal '21, we're seeing ongoing movement from customers to invest in the broadband access network. They, too, and I mentioned this, are very cognizant of supply chain factors and working to crispen their forecast thereof and budgets thereof in order to stay ahead of it and give us the visibility we need to give them the supply matching their demand. So all things stated, I think the budget activities and forecast activity is signaling to us that DAA is continuing to grow and the foundation of that is, of course, the investment in the access network all those factors that we talked about, the investment in rural broadband capacity constraints in the access network that remain pressured by the increase in consumer Internet consumption. That was a step function increase in the pandemic over and above an already rapidly increasing trend in broadband consumption. So all signs that we're seeing from customers give us a strong confidence that we are going to continue to drive this growth in Entra over the course of fiscal '22.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from [indiscernible], a private investor.

[Unknown Attendee]

The -- you used up cash about $10 million since the previous quarter. And out of that was $7.7 million -- now do you see a further decrease in cash going forward in the next few quarters? Or would it stabilize at this?

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Yes. So I think you can see that we're positioning for ongoing growth, and that creates an opportunity for of course, leverage on the OpEx and free cash flow from operations as we continue to grow. Naturally, you would expect to lever up and drive our free cash flow into the business. But at the same time, things like staying ahead of supply chain and the investments in inventory we're having to make our significant relative to the size of our sales today. CDS projects moving around in time require us to stage inventory thereof. So we are -- the percentage of our cash balance that can be influenced by timing adjustments is there, but no concern that we're already at a point of driving ourselves into further leverage and free cash flow to work there. And we have no debt naturally as well. So and there's lots of path to funding our working capital investments on the cash balance.

[Unknown Attendee]

Okay. So that's not necessarily the reason that the preliminary prospectus of funding $50 million was posted on SEDAR? Maybe you could give us some color on what your plans are? I also see that it may include some further sales including in that preliminary prospectus of maybe insiders.

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Sure. I think one of the factors that we've talked about is that our trading volume is something that we have a little overall float relative to where we think we -- comparable companies may be, and we're working to address that. That's a factor driving that movement. Working capital is something I've talked about in various conversations over time that as we're in high growth mode and in parallel, high demand growth from our customers based on what we're offering in DAA, along with supply chain constraints that are happening in parallel. We do want to be aggressive in deploying working capital. So that is a correct kind of connection as well that the prospectus may give us an opportunity to continue to invest aggressively in working capital in favor of design wins in DAA, which ultimately will create leverage and drive cash flow, as I was talking about earlier significantly.

[Unknown Attendee]

Yes. Well, I believe that it will be very useful to investors that there is more liquidity in the market certainly. And so do you have any plans? Or do you see any useful plans in getting listed in the U.S.?

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Yes. So no plans at this time. And what I will say again is that with respect to the shelf prospectus, there are many issuers that are doing that and it is a quite common practice to have that vehicle in place, have your annual information form continuously updated, being continuously reporting to enable you to move quickly depending on market demand for equity if that emerges. So that is something that is good practice for us as we consider if there was an opportunity to do a financing to drive our working capital, to drive our liquidity. And with respect to the U.S., I think that's always something that remains in mind for the future and as possible for us under this vehicle.

[Unknown Attendee]

Okay. Great. Now I'd like to know about what is the difference like -- the next generation of Terrace IQ, could you give us some indication on what that entails?

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Yes. So what happens in the commercial video environment is that you need to make an adaptation of the video signal so that you can send a video lineup within a property without requiring things like set-top boxes or that drive costs higher and drive speed lower of deploying into the commercial vertical. These customers are bundling video services or broadband services in the hospitality type property. So that necessitates an adaptation of the video signals the equipment closet, if you will, the entry point into the commercial property. In the current generation, and we've said that with proprietary digital video technologies from the network. And as we've talked about the overall network that's feeding these properties is moving to IP video. So Terrace IQ effectively allows us to adapt that IP video once again, through the property without requiring any set-top boxes or things like that. And that remains the case, the use case that has always been strong for Vecima's tariffs platforms across commercial video very high-margin businesses for our customers as well, driving this triple play bundle that they do in the commercial vertical. So we -- and we also have a very strong deployed base between the TerraceQAM, the TC600 and the TC600E where we have -- we are the market leader of 80%-plus market share in tens of thousands of platforms deployed globally. Each and every one of those sites can be upgraded in the TerraceIQ as the shift in the network to IPTV requires an operator make the upgrade.

[Unknown Attendee]

Okay. Well, traditionally, the first quarter based on previous years has always been the slowest point, and the second and third quarter usually much better -- and do you see that going for -- continued practice or...

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Sure. Sure. I mean, generally speaking, there is a little bit of seasonality, and you're correct, the first quarter, the third calendar quarter is a period where things can get a little slower. There's many reasons for that. Second quarter, of course, is kind of a calendar year-end quarter for the customer set in many cases, a budget year-end quarter, and the preparation quarter for the next calendar year. So that creates a lot of tailwinds in the seasonality, and that's very typical for our industry. So yes, that's a good footnote that this is -- this has been the case in the past and is a trend.

[Unknown Attendee]

Yes. And since we're already almost halfway through the current quarter, it should be favorable. Now the -- yes, anyway. That's probably it.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes again from [indiscernible], a Private Investor.

[Unknown Attendee]

Yes. I just forgot assuming -- do you see your profit margin continue or was that a one -- just a onetime event?

[Sumit Kumar, CEO, President & Non Independent Director]

Yes. I think in terms of EBITDA margin, which is the best kind of activities for profit margin is that as you've seen the mix driven by the top line and the gross margin profile and then down through the OpEx cadence we're on now has provided a sign of we're approaching the mid-teens and an EBITDA margin. Then I talked a little bit earlier about the sales volume as it continues to grow driven by Entra and things like that, that we're looking at leverage on the OpEx. So you can read into that, that we expect tailwinds to the EBITDA margin going forward.

[Operator]

There appears no further questions. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.