Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Alexander Henderson: Great, thanks. I was hoping we could talk a little bit about the mix between product and service and the 2024 expectations. I realize that the service was up quite a bit in the January quarter, but it was actually down significantly quarter-to-quarter because the January quarter is typically a lock down quarter for most service providers in terms of mix, you pointed out that there was a shift to transceivers, which they will install but not line systems. So I’m assuming that the line systems installation is going to increase meaningfully quarter-to-quarter. And therefore, you’re looking at, what, $210 million to $220 million of service, which would imply that the product sales are down about 25% to 35%, something in that range and how does that play out over the course of the year, as the installation continues to be churning through what’s been shipped as opposed to new shipments?

And then does it fall off at some point after an under shipment period, so we get out in the fourth quarter and into the first half of 2025, does this service start to roll off, can you give us some guidance on that?

James E. Moylan, Jr.: Let me give a little context here, Alex. You have to think about that services business really, it’s two businesses. One is maintenance and one is installation. Those are the two things. We have some other consulting-type practices and advanced type services, but those two make up the bulk of it. The maintenance expense is going to grow essentially as our product sales grow because almost everybody takes maintenance with our products. So that’s one piece. On the implementation side, it’s not one size fits all. For most of the larger carriers in the U.S., we don’t do a ton of installation. Now we have started to, as they have tried to work through their inventory levels. But in the past, we didn’t do a lot of installation for them.

In places like Asia, South America, sometimes in Europe, we do a lot of installation. So our services mix is going to be, I think, more related to where our sales are. And I’d say this that we love expanding our implementation business, and we’d love to continue to help our big customers here in the U.S., and that’s what we’re trying to do. Scott?

Scott McFeely: Yes. That’s the dominant dynamic, Jim, you’re right. I think there’s some nuances in there. The Installation Services pieces of it, it varies by geography, and it varies by portfolio. So historically, we haven’t done a lot of Installation Services on our routing and switching portfolio, for example. As those solution sets get more sophisticated, as our customers are, and we’ll continue to look to us to do more installation. Mixed geographically, in some parts of the world, we do those installation services ourselves. In some parts of the world, the customers do themselves, in some parts they turn to third-party partners to do it. And there’s — it varies quite a bit on the mix of where that revenue is coming from.

And that’s going to change over time. In addition to that, it’s not a major piece of it but our services team is also busy trying to expand their service offers to our customers, and that we hope to grow over time. We think our service business is going to continue to grow at or above the growth rate for the company.

Alexander Henderson: Just to be clear, though, the seasonal swing between the January and the April quarter, normally services are lower in the first quarter because of the lockdown. Are we expecting it to be up sequentially $212 million, $215 million, something like that, in which case, the majority of the quarter-to-quarter decline is in the product side?

James E. Moylan, Jr.: It’s always very risky to try to give individual slices of what we expect of our business. I would think this, because of the dynamics that we talked about, because we will show growth in Q2 in our overall business, it is likely that services will grow as well. So I don’t have a number for you, but I think it will probably grow just like the product revenue will grow in Q2.

Alexander Henderson: Okay, thanks.

Operator: The next question comes from David Vogt with UBS. Please go ahead. David, your line might be muted.

David Vogt: Sorry guys, I was on mute. Thanks again for all the color. Maybe just digging back into backlog and orders. Maybe, Jim, can you help us understand where backlog exited the quarter. I think last quarter, you mentioned it was roughly around $2.6 billion. And so what we’re trying to figure out is what the orders look like going forward and how to kind of triangulate the growth rate in 2025 in terms of an order trajectory? And I have a follow-up.

James E. Moylan, Jr.: Our backlog, we ended backlog in Q1 at $2.2 billion. So you can sort of calculate what our orders were in Q1. We said last quarter that we expect our backlog generally speaking, to come down for the full year because we are approaching historical levels of lead times and customer ordering behaviors are probably going to track those in the past, which means that our ending year backlog is going to approach a level like the levels we had prior to all the craziness of the past three years, which traditionally has been about 35% to 40% of the coming year’s revenue. And that consists of $1 billion or so of services and about $1 billion of products and software. That’s what it’s been historically. I mean that’s what makes up to $2.2 billion.

David Vogt: Great. And so maybe if I just extrapolate that comment in 2024 into 2025, maybe I’m doing the math wrong here, but it would imply that your order growth rate in 2025 would have to be up somewhere like 35% to 40% relative to 2024. Are we doing the math right and if that’s the case, what does that imply for SP orders coming back next year, I know you didn’t give a full year guide yet it’s early, but just trying to kind of triangulate on how we get to those that 6% to 8% multiyear target that you just provided? Thanks.