Vecima Networks Inc

TSX:VCM

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Operator]

Hello. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome to Vecima Networks Second Quarter Fiscal 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. 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 second quarter 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 second quarter fiscal 2022 results as well as detailed supplemental investor information are posted on investment 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 3 and 6 months ended December 31, 2021 and 2022. 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 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 marketability, 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 assumptions may prove 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 proceed with his remarks. Please go ahead.

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

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We have some really outstanding second quarter financial results to tell you about today, as well as a significant number of operational achievements. So let's get started.To begin, I'm proud to report that our sales accelerated to a record $43.6 million in the second quarter. That's the best quarterly revenue result in all of Vecima's 33-year history. Our pace of growth was also outstanding. On a year-over-year basis, we achieved sales growth of 47%. And our sales on a quarter-over-quarter basis were up a remarkable 35% sequentially. This world-class organic growth is driven by the tremendous demand momentum we're experiencing for our market-leading Distributed Access Architecture and IPTV products.I also want to point out that these rapidly growing revenue results were achieved despite significant global supply chain challenges. I know most of you are familiar with the unprecedented material shortages impacting not just the tech sector, but virtually every industry. Obviously, Vecima is not immune to these forces. But our strategy is to work closely with customers on long-term demand forecasts to very fluidly manage our suppliers and to invest in the working capital needed to build inventories are all paying off. I should add that our supply chain strategies together with highly disciplined cost management, also helped us to deliver a strong gross margin of 50% in the second quarter.Between the top line lift off and the margin, we produced gross profit of $21.8 million, another all-time record for Vecima. We've also translated the fruits of this growth. The way we have designed the business model, together with our execution, allowed us to highly leverage our record top line growth through to the bottom line. We nearly tripled adjusted EBITDA to $7.4 million year-over-year. And we ended the quarter with net income of $1.5 million and adjusted earnings per share of $0.06.We're very proud of these results, and it's tremendously satisfying to see the rewards of our multiyear strategies and investments reflect more and more in our financial results.Looking at performance across our business segments. It was another exciting quarter for Video and Broadband Solutions, with sales of $27.2 million, led by our next-generation Entra DAA products. Entra sales climbed 130% year-over-year to $18.5 million, another new high for our DAA portfolio. This continued growth in Entra was achieved despite supply chain pressures that still limited our fulfillment in Q2.Demand over and above what we shipped in Entra was not only higher, but accumulated still more in the quarter, both between existing customer expansion and new customer wins. Our total customer engagements for Entra grew to 80 during the period. And by quarter end, we were actively selling to 43 customers, up from 39% in the previous quarter. This included wins with new customers like GCI, which is Alaska's largest telecommunications provider. And subsequent to the quarter end, we announced Liberty Latin America is using Entra to support its expansion to ultra-broadband services.While ramping new customers, we are also deepening our relationships with key industry leaders, including some of the largest Tier 1s in the world. Last quarter, I talked about Charter Communications identifying Vecima as a key strategic partner at our industry's highest profile event. In Q2, Vecima and Charter took our partnership a step further as we successfully demonstrated the long-term hybrid fiber coaxial network over DOCSIS 4.0. Together, we demonstrated the reality of 10G as we clocked blistering broadband speeds, both downstream and upstream.Achievements like that not only underscore Vecima's partnerships with world-class operators, but they also highlight our position as a leading provider of preeminent next-generation technology solutions. Our progress is also translating into market share gains. The telecommunications market research group, Dell'Oro recently identified Vecima as the current market share leader in 2 major DAA product categories, Remote MACPHY and fiber-to-the-home remote optical line terminals. Of course, we have significant market strength in Remote PHY, cabinet-based 10-gig EPON and DAA video products as well. And we're continually strengthening our position as we add new features and enhancements to our expanding portfolio of cable and fiber access network products.Simply stated, Vecima has built the industry's strongest DAA offering, the largest and most comprehensive portfolio of solutions, the most advanced technologies and now some of the fastest technology as we drive the future of the 10G network. We're leading the way in the massive new worldwide market for DAA. And with every passing quarter, we're continuing to build on that lead.Looking at other contributors to the excellent VBS performance, segment performance in Q2, it was another strong quarter for Terrace QAM, with sales increasing to $4.9 million. That was up 61% year-over-year and 3% quarter-over-quarter, as our lead customer continued to expand its hospitality footprint.Keep in mind again that every Terrace QAM platform we sell is upgradable to our new next-generation TerraceIQ platform. We already have more than 10 customers in trials of TerraceIQ. And during Q2, we continued to advance this new platform with additional IP streaming formats and functionality.We see TerraceIQ providing significant growth area for us going forward as we start to upgrade our widely deployed base of Terrace QAM platforms. To put the size of the opportunity in perspective, we currently boast an 85% market share with Terrace QAM and commercial video. And because TerraceIQ can be utilized anywhere and everywhere with an IPTV feed, the entire commercial hospitality vertical is addressable with the platform. That represents a significant opportunity for Vecima as TerraceIQ has rolled out both for upgrades and new sites, where, again, its adaptation of video into the commercial property really shines.Turning now to our Content Delivery and Storage segment. It was a record quarter for CDS as revenues climbed to $15 million off of our highest ever quarterly order flow. This is a significant rebound from Q1, when we experienced some pandemic-related scheduling delays with some of our customers. During the second quarter, customers got back on track with IPTV deployments and expansions again, filling the pipeline. New business wins added to our momentum and included the largest IPTV network contract to date for our MediaScaleX products. We also brought on new customers in various regions in North America. The end result was an impressive CDS sales growth of 27% year-over-year and 121% sequentially.And the CDS business wins continue to -- the wins continued into the third quarter. We recently announced that Breezeline, previously Atlantic Broadband, selected Vecima for IPTV deployment on its network. That's a significant win covering a large number of subscribers through Breezeline's network and their top 10 operator footprint in the U.S. In total, our MediaScaleX solutions are now in use by over 35 operators worldwide, who collectively serve a base of over 100 million subscribers.So that provides a tremendous base of opportunity with many of these operators poised for further IPTV expansion, and it represents a large collective global footprint addressable with a shift to open caching.It's generally agreed that every major telco, MSO and mobile operator is actively looking at migrating to IPTV today. It's a required element in their network to fulfill video content consumption and to provide the best possible end-to-end user experience. Vecima has a technology and solutions to support them and to empower them to further leverage these networks from monetizing video.During the second quarter, we successfully completed interoperability tests under the streaming video alliances, open caching standard with our MediaScaleX platforms. This means that we're positioned to supply open caching solutions to our existing base of customers and they're once again over 100 million subscribers in their footprint. So lots more to come from CDS.In our Telematics segment, second quarter brought continued profitable performance along with a number of new business wins. We increased our deployments in high-value verticals, including the municipal, government and movable asset markets. And I'm pleased to report we brought on 12 new customers for our Nero Asset Tracking platform. We're now monitoring over 15,000 units with our asset tracking solution, a significant increase. And as always, profitability in the Telematics segment remained very strong, with Telematics achieving trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA of $1.95 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 35%.Overall, it was an outstanding second quarter for Vecima, with all parts of the business performing very strongly.And now I'll turn the call over to Dale, to provide some more detail on our second quarter and first half financial results. Dale?

[Dale Booth, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Sumit. For the purposes of this call, we assume that everyone has seen our second 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 December 31, 2021, we generated sales of $43.6 million. This was an increase of 35% over the $32.4 million in Q1 fiscal 2022 and an increase of 40% from $29.7 million in Q2 last year, and led by an increased demand for our Entra family of DAA products and record sales for our MediaScaleX IPTV solutions.The year-over-year increase reflects the growth of the Video and Broadband Solutions segment, driven by our new Entra family and our commercial video family as our hospitality customers prepare for migration to next-generation products as well as the expected gains in our Content Delivery and Storage segment, as multiple customers continued to forge ahead with their IP video deployment plans.Within the Video and Broadband Solutions segment, we generated sales of $27.2 million. This was up 65% from the $16.5 million in Q2 last year and 12% higher than the $24.3 million last quarter as customers began their transition to next-generation networks using Vecima solutions.Our Entra next-generation DAA products contributed record second quarter revenue of $18.5 million, up 130% from the $8 million in Q2 fiscal 2021 and up 2% from $18.1 million in Q1 last quarter. But still at the early stages of the shift to DAA, a rapidly expanding group of Tier 1, 2 and 3 customers have begun their transition to next-generation networks.Commercial video family sales for the quarter grew to $8.7 million, up 4% from $8.4 million in Q2 fiscal 2021 and sequentially up 42% from $6.1 million in Q1 last quarter, reflecting continued strong demand for our Terrace QAM platform as operators continued their commercial rollout for the current generation while preparing for the next-generation TerraceIQ platform.In the Content Delivery and Storage segment, second quarter revenues were $15 million as compared to $11.8 million in Q2 last year and $6.8 million in Q1 fiscal 2022. Segment sales for the Q2 fiscal 2022 period included $11.3 million of product sales and $3.7 million of services revenue. The significant quarter-over-quarter increase in CDS sales reflects early movement on IPTV expansions to customer networks as well as the return to activity on certain pandemic delayed projects.Demand for Vecima's MediaScaleX IPTV and open caching solutions remain strong, and we expect another solid quarter in Q3 fiscal 2022. On a full year basis, we continue to anticipate high single-digit to low double-digit growth for the Content Delivery and Storage segment in fiscal 2022.Turning to the Telematics segment. As expected, sales of $1.4 million in the second quarter were on par with the $1.4 million achieved in the same period last year and up slightly from the $1.3 million last quarter. We anticipate an incremental growth in demand from the fleet tracking market in fiscal 2022, along with continued gradual growth in demand for our asset tracking services.Gross margin for the second quarter was 50.1%, up from 48.5% in Q1 2022 and 49.6% in Q2 of fiscal 2021. The year-over-year improvement reflects a higher margin product mix, partially offset by continued foreign exchange headwinds related to a strength in Canadian dollar and increased expediting costs related to supply chain constraints.Video and Broadband Solutions gross profit margin was 47% in the current year quarter. This was higher than the 43% a year ago and on par with the 47% in Q1 of fiscal '22. The stronger VBS gross margin reflects a higher margin product mix, partially offset by foreign exchange headwinds related to the strengthening Canadian dollar and increased expediting costs related to supply chain constraints.Gross margin in the Content Delivery and Storage segment was at 54% in the quarter, up from 50% in Q1 last quarter, but down slightly from the 56% in Q2 last year due to variations in product and customer mix. In the Telematics segment, gross margin in the quarter increased to 69% from the 63% in Q1 last quarter and on par with the 70% in Q2 fiscal '21.Turning to second quarter operating expenses. The notable changes year-over-year were as follows: R&D expenses increased to $8.4 million in the quarter from $7 million in Q2 fiscal '21. This increase reflects higher amortization of deferred development costs, increased headcount and software licensing costs. We continue to invest in research and development to support the launch of new products. Until these new products are commercialized, development costs are deferred to future periods.Sales and marketing expenses for Q2 fiscal '22 increased to $4.6 million from $3.5 million in the same period last year. The increase in sales and marketing expense primarily reflects higher staffing costs to support the increase in sales year-over-year as well as it's an increase in travel, entertainment and trade show expenses as travel and business restrictions due to COVID-19 have been reduced.G&A expenses at $5.5 million in the quarter were up from the $4.6 million in Q2 fiscal '21, reflecting ERP implementation and software licensing costs, additional new hires and subcontracting costs. Total OpEx in Q2 increased to $18.5 million from $16.3 million during the same period last year. This reflects higher operating expenses in both the VBS and CDS segments related to costs to support the increased sales activity as well as the increase in R&D to support the development of our next generation of products.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 $9.7 million or 22% of sales from $8.9 million or 30% 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 deployment. We reported operating income of $3.3 million in Q2 fiscal '22 as compared to an operating loss of $1.6 million in the same period last year. The $4.9 million increase in operating income was driven by an increase in contribution from all 3 segments.Net income for the quarter was $1.5 million or $0.06 per share. This compares to a net loss of $3.1 million or $0.14 per share in Q2 fiscal '21.Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the second quarter with $10.3 million in cash. The decrease in cash in the quarter mainly reflects the continued strategic buildup of inventory by $1.7 million in the quarter. Other noncash working capital of $3.4 million, capital expenditures of $2 million and dividends of $2.5 million, offset by positive cash flow of $5.7 million before deferred development of $3.7 million. Working capital decreased to $42.5 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. The timing of our product shipments are lumpy, reflecting the requirements of our major customers.Finally, cash flow from operations for the second quarter increased to cash provided by operations of $1.4 million from cash used in operations of $0.5 million during the same period last year. The $1.9 million improvement reflects a $4.4 million increase in operating cash flow from operations, offset by a $2.5 million decrease due to noncash working capital.Now back to Sumit.

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

Thank you, Dale. Turning now to our outlook. In our Video and Broadband Solutions segment, we anticipate more sales acceleration for our Entra products through the balance of fiscal 2022. Our outlook is supported by our growing backlog of purchase orders and long-term customer forecasts are providing excellent visibility into the heavy demand levels going forward.Looking beyond fiscal '22, we see even greater momentum for our cable access products. We're just at the beginning of a once-in-a-generation network transition to Distributed Access Architecture, and we anticipate a multiyear cycle of investment into the broadband access network. With our industry-leading portfolio of DAA solutions and ever stronger operator relationships, we're exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on this remarkable opportunity.In our commercial video family of products, we anticipate continued demand for the current generation Terrace QAM, making way for the migration to next-generation TerraceIQ, alongside of the overall network transition to IPTV.Looking at the Content Delivery and Storage segment, demand for our IPTV and Open Caching solutions is building, and we anticipate another strong quarter for CDS in the third quarter. On a full year basis, we continue to anticipate high single-digit to low double-digit sales growth for the CDS segment. Remember that IPTV, like Distributed Access Architecture is still in its early days. As the industry transition to IPTV gains more momentum, we see significant opportunities for our MediaScaleX solutions and a long runway of growth. And finally, in our Telematics business, we expect consistent incremental growth from the fleet tracking market and increase the demand for our newer movable asset-tracking services.I want to remind investors again that the global supply chain situation remains challenging and could potentially constrain our revenue growth and margins if it persists or worsens. This could also lead to more pronounced short-term fluctuations. Overall, however, we anticipate a strong second half for Vecima with ongoing growth in this groundbreaking year as our next-generation solutions continue to gain momentum, and our excitement and confident investments of longer-term future continues to build.As the progress we're already making is highlighting, Vecima is well on the path of taking the company to a new era of scale, size, performance and success, and we're leading the global network evolution to the multi-gigabit era. The network vision investment is imagined, developed and deployed.That concludes our formal comments for today. We'd now be happy to take questions. Operator?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Steven Li with Raymond James.

[Steven Li, Director & Equity Research Analyst]

I'm assuming Entra saw some constraints in the quarter given the flat revenue sequentially. Is that right?

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

Yes. I think as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we drove significant year-over-year growth. And as you know, supply chain stuff was starting to come into the fold in the first quarter, [ comp ] is down, and we did get some sequential growth in the second quarter. But I've also said that we had ongoing and further accumulation and backlog. So we weren't able to hit the, of course, the natural demand in the second quarter than we otherwise would have for supply chain implications. So continued accumulation and backlog, some incremental progress. And the first developments from our management of supply chain start to show up in the second quarter, and we're expecting onward progress in the third.

[Steven Li, Director & Equity Research Analyst]

And Sumit, but it's also felt like in CDS, you were able to expedite and capture the revenue opportunities. So I'm thinking any reason why you were able to do that in CDS and not able to do that for Entra?

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

Yes. I think one thing that's important to distinguish the segments is that our products in CDS, of course, all of our products across both segments are all software-driven. However, in CDS, the deployment model of MediaScaleX is over commercial off-the-shelf servers. And on a global basis, the supply chain for COT servers that we use in the IPTV segment are very broad. So it creates a bit more fluidity. Whereas in distributed access, of course, we're manufacturing our DAA nodes in Saskatoon with some contract manufacturers. Those are customized, hard work, very deliberately. That's what's necessary in the cable network to make this whole thing happen.So you can kind of reflect on that basis that we had a little more fluidity available to us in IPTV because of the global supply scenario on those COT servers that people use for all manners of x86 compute, for example.

[Steven Li, Director & Equity Research Analyst]

Got it. That makes sense. Just switching gears to commercial video. I know kind of -- at least what I'm expecting year-over-year, I think that for commercial video, it's down year-over-year. That decline, is it also bringing about some pressure on the gross margin? Or have you been able to maintain that gross margin for commercial video?

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

Yes. No, we've had a great scenario there, where by and large, our margin profile in commercial video has maintained, and that's been similar for several years now. And the supply chain pressure may have a little bit of short-term influence on that, if we're putting some expedites into those product lines, but not necessarily as it relates to the transition that we're in the midst of to the TerraceIQ where we're seeing a little bit of year-over-year decline while we get through to the next generation. So along with that transition, I don't think there's anything to think about there in terms of margin profile changes.

[Steven Li, Director & Equity Research Analyst]

Okay. Got it. And last one for me. There was a 20% customer in the quarter, Sumit. That was a significant step-up for that customer year-over-year and Q-over-Q. Is that step-up onetime or their rollout is growing in scope and are they going to sustain that level for some time?

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

Yes. And a 20% customer, and we have several of these customers that can give the quarter be north of 10%, 15% when they have such pull in demand and where we've got a pipeline to fill their orders. with the supply and whatnot. So that we're seeing across the full suite of 43 customers in Entra that we mentioned that we're up to. Now we're seeing all of them continuing to scale, including those larger customers, for example, like you saw the large one in the second quarter. So we have multiple of those types of customers. And as we continue to grow, the representation as a proportion of our growing top line will decline, but we're feeling that all of those major customers are going in an upward direction.

[Steven Li, Director & Equity Research Analyst]

Okay. But this expansion scope you've seen, I mean, is it lumpy? Like, it can go back down next quarter? Or is it steady, gradually expanding going forward?

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

So from a forecast perspective, everything we see is very universal expansion in terms of what's happening. I think the lumpiness is potentially a little bit of a reflection of some of the supply chain and what we're able to fill in the Q2 period, for example. So we don't -- in the forecast that we're getting visibility into, which, of course, as we mentioned, are expanding because customers are working with us to manage the supply chain, we're seeing this nice continuous trend.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Jesse Pytlak with Cormark Securities.

[Jesse Pytlak, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

On the supply chain issues, can you maybe just speak a little bit about how maybe it's evolved through kind of the last quarter and into the current quarter? Has it been pretty static? Or are you seeing new risks emerge? Or what are you kind of seeing from where you sit?

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

Yes. I think what we're seeing is we're kind of midway in our view in terms of getting to the long-term new normal on the supply chain environment. In the second half of calendar '21, we saw these overnight lead time expansions from typical 16, maybe 20 weeks to 52 to 70 weeks from almost the entire supply chain. So that, of course, creates a discontinuity of managed through in your lead times and your forecasting that you have to get over that hump, so to speak, in the lead time transition. And now some of that is loosening up and we've, of course, had some time go by where our fresh orders are starting to roll through.I think at this point in the transition to the new normal, things that we're watching out for, things like supplier decommits and whatnot, where some of the prior orders are delayed, for example, because the situation globally remains the same, where there's relatively finite silicon capacity, for example, and we have confirmed orders. In some cases, we've seen them slip a bit. So that's the environment we're in today. But we've been really good at being able to leverage expedites to pull those back in. So that's the kind of battle we're in now.And then the last phase that we feel like we're approaching in calendar '22 is okay, the lead times have shifted and now we've got great long-term forecasting activity, and we've got corresponding orders position with the supply chain. You know that we can get on the other side of this step function change that's happened in lead times and things start to calm down a bit. So we're midway through that, and we feel like we've made some great progress. We've had some great engagement with some critical Tier 1 suppliers at an executive level that are supporting us and recognize our strategic positioning relative to their businesses, and we saw the results of that in the second quarter, and we feel like we -- our continued management positions us to continue to drive the growth in Entra that we're seeing.

[Jesse Pytlak, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Great. That's really helpful. And then just kind of switching over to the open cache initiative. This is something that you haven't really spoken too much about publicly, if I recall. Can you maybe just talk about how you see your customers eventually migrating to that type of architecture and how you really see yourself fitting in?

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

Yes. So we've mentioned that between our 35 CDS customers, their footprints are somewhere around 100 million subscribers, and they're using our products to provide managed IP video largely, and that means their own pay TV packages and whatnot. At the same time, of course, as we've seen, there's a lot of video traffic that is flowing over their networks that are streaming video services over the top. That traffic is being delivered using a distributed base of cache servers that are at peering points and Internet interchanges, for example. What we can do with open caching is position those caches within the operator's network so that they can actually as a service, provide that traffic flow as compared to some of the vendors like, for example, public CDN vendors and whatnot.So it's an aspect of them being able to transition to monetizing the video traffic from over-the-top streaming in partnership with us and with some differentiating aspects of being able to place those cashes like many of our caches are today, for the managed video place those caches very deep in the network. So that, of course, increases the quality of service, it decreases the latency, and it relieves some of the backhaul traffic costs for the operator. So there's a lot of opportunity for the operator to monetize a new area that they haven't, to a certain extent at this point.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] As there appears to be no further questions, this concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.