ADTRAN Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADTN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tom Stanton: There is a nuance there that you got to understand for it to all kind of click in there. So yes, without a doubt the biggest issue was two specific customers that we had previously shipped a significant amount to. I don’t consider that inventory problem. I consider that as they buy kind of in six month increments, right, that’s just the way that they buy. And so that impacted us. If you look at access and agg, access and agg was down but it’s made up of several different things. It’s made up of switching components that are sold into fiber to the prem and sometimes outside of hybrid to the prem and it’s also made of optics, so pluggable optics that actually go along with the product. If I look at OLT shipments, and this is kind of a — we’re getting down into the weeds here.

But if I look at OLT shipments into the Tier 3s, they were flattish, and that was in Q4. So in Q1, I’m expecting similar, maybe slightly up, but I’m expecting something similar to that. But if you look at optics, those vary pretty heavily by quarter-to-quarter. And the optics portion of that actually pluggable piece was down in Q4 and I would expect it to come back up a little in Q1. You can think about that as more inventory specific things, by the way, where they may have some optics but don’t have the actual hardware components, the active hardware components in the OLT. Did that clarify [Multiple Speakers] for you?

Tim Savageaux: And just continuing on that, if you look at the competitive dynamics, and I know you discussed that with regard to some of the Huawei replacement. But again, specifically in that US rural broadband market. I guess, what are you seeing there from a competitive standpoint in terms of the potential for competition to intensify here in kind of a flattish market environment or any other dynamics that you would be willing to comment on?

Tom Stanton: It’s pretty similar to what we saw most of last year. I mean, that market is predominantly us competing against Calix and then in some cases Nokia. Don’t see — we’re kind of the three that are actively in that market with Calix is who we run up against most, and the dynamics that really haven’t changed. Software is a much bigger part of the story, that’s why I mentioned the Mosaic One, kind of our take rate on Mosaic One has been fantastic. We also launched a very, very good offering in our Intellifi, which is our managed Wi-Fi specifically for that segment. But the dynamics really haven’t changed, they’re about the same. There’s — everybody’s kind of getting positioned. There really haven’t been any awards yet through the states, or I think Louisiana is the first one that actually has cleared all of the paths to start to get funding and then they have to go through an award process.

So I think everybody is trying to touch every customer that’s kind of potential in there and then as the money starts flowing through, we’ll start seeing who’s actually winning these customers.

Tim Savageaux: That’s great. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Tom Stanton: At this point, I think we’re out of question. So I appreciate everybody joining us for the call and look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

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