Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ:HLIT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ:HLIT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 29, 2024

Harmonic Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Hello, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Quarter 2024 Harmonic Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tawanda, and I will be your operator for today’s call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode [Operator Instructions]. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to David Hanover, Investor Relations. David, you may begin.

David Hanover: Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. And thank you for joining us today for Harmonic’s first quarter 2024 financial results conference call. With me today are Patrick Harshman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Nimrod Ben-Natan, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Harmonic’s Broadband Business; 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 the webcast, which you may view by going to our webcast on our Investor Relations Web site. Now turning to Slide 2. 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-K reports in the forward-looking statements section of today’s preliminary results press release. These documents identify important risk factors, which could 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. 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 Web site and filed with the SEC on Form 8-K.

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 this information will be available on a recorded version of this call or on our Web site. And now, I’ll turn the call over to our CEO, Patrick Harshman. Patrick?

Patrick Harshman: Thanks, David. And welcome everyone, to our first quarter call. Today, we reported our Q1 results and updated full year outlook, both of which are in line with our prior guidance and demonstrate solid execution and continuing confidence in our growth opportunities. Key business highlights; include, strong broadband orders and new customer wins, supporting this business’ sustained multiyear growth trajectory; continued video SaaS revenue growth, driven by new sports opportunities and ad delivery technology; and retirement of our outstanding convertible debt this month, capping share dilution associated with convertible notes. We also announced on April 8th my planned retirement on June 11th, the date of our Annual Shareholder Meeting and our board selection of Nimrod Ben-Natan as the next CEO of Harmonic.

Nimrod, Walter and the senior Harmonic team have my full confidence in driving the next phase of growth for our company, and I look forward to having a continuing supporting relationship with Nimrod and the Board for at least another year. And with that, I’ll now turn the call over to you, Nimrod, to provide a more detailed update on our broadband business.

Nimrod Ben-Natan: Thank you, Patrick. Moving now to our broadband business on Slide number 4. We reported segment revenue of $78.9 million, a decrease of 31% sequentially and 21% year-over-year, which was in line with our expectations. We had another strong quarter of new bookings, driving record new backlog. The number of global customers deploying our solution reached 113, up 20% year-over-year, corresponding with 28.6 million DOCSIS cable modems now serve worldwide. This represents approximately 16% of cable modems deployed globally. Again, highlighting the substantial DOCSIS growth opportunity still in front of us in addition to further upgrades to DOCSIS 4.0 and fiber-to-the-home. As a result of this growth, Dell’Oro has recognized Harmonic with a fourth consecutive year of market share leadership in the DAA category, which is virtual CMTS and remote PHY devices, as well as becoming global market share leader in total cable broadband equipment.

As we communicated last quarter, the pace of DOCSIS 4.0 shipments is accelerating in accordance with our plan and we expect this to expand further in the second half of the year. Additionally, we recently participated in the CableLabs DOCSIS 4.0 and DAA Technology Interop event where we showcased our end-to-end DOCSIS 4.0 solution, highlighting record speeds of 9.4 gigabit per second for DOCSIS and interoperability with multiple DOCSIS 4.0 cable modems. We are also getting increased customer interest in our boosted DOCSIS 3.1 capability, which is unlocking the full potential of the existing DOCSIS networks in combination with a new generation of DOCSIS 4.0 modems. This upgrade option is creating a unique opportunity for cable operators to achieve fiber speeds at the lower capital intensity and faster time to market.

Driven by the migration to higher speed networks, we announced earlier today a new and unique product capability, the Beacon, which is a new application running on our cOS edge compute platform alongside the virtual CMTS and it helps maximizing the broadband speed, while lowering the operating cost of maintaining the network and dynamically addressing noise interference using our edge compute platform and AI implementation. In the first quarter, we built on the momentum of our fiber-to-the-home initiatives. Most notably, we have secured a seven-digit purchase order for our recently launched new fiber products from an international Tier 1 customer. This important milestone further validates our innovative approach with our fiber solutions. We also see continued traction with our fiber islands strategy.

We are enabling operators who use our DOCSIS technology to fiber connect high value customers and MDUs within their existing HFC footprint [fill-ins] and self overbuilds to enhance services in a way that reduces churn within existing service areas and enabling dramatically cost-effective edge outs with fiber. During the first quarter, we also announced that Millicom Tigo is accelerating deployment with our node based solution to offer fiber to the home service. These advancements are critical as we continue to scale our operations and add fiber as a key driver of our financial success. Both Comcast and Charter contributed greater than 10% of our first quarter revenue, and we are grateful to be working with both of them to scale and expand their respective deployment milestones.

We continue to focus on further diversifying our business. This is showing positive results with larger portion of our business coming from others in the marketplace. We are seeing an expanding pipeline of opportunities from these other operators, driven by urgency to modernize their architecture to enable greater reliability and higher upstream and downstream speeds. As part of this effort, we recently hired Jeff Glahn as our new global SVP of Sales to exclusively lead our broadband go-to-market strategy and have also expanded the team with dedicated fiber, sales and specialists. In summary, our broadband business continues to be uniquely positioned with differentiated technology advantages, great customer relationships, expanding backlog and a rich array of new products and business opportunities that give us confidence in our multiyear growth outlook.

We executed the first quarter according to our 2024 plan and are confident in our ability to carry this execution forward through 2024 and beyond. I’m excited to be here today and honored to have been chosen by our Board to serve as the next CEO of Harmonic. I look forward to connecting with many of you in the coming weeks. Now, let me turn it back to Patrick.

Patrick Harshman: Okay. Thanks, Nimrod. Turning now to our Video segment. The big picture is that we continue to see streaming SaaS become a larger portion of the business. In addition, we’ve closed our strategic review and are now actively rebuilding business momentum with a focus on further SaaS growth and driving improved profitability. SaaS revenue in the quarter was $12.9 million up 11% year-over-year but down modestly sequentially. Total segment revenue was $43.2 million, down from $57.3 million a year ago. We’ve continued to see macroeconomic and sector headwinds impacting our traditional Pay TV customer spending on appliances. And our strategic review process was also causing a growing number of appliance and SaaS customers to hold back on new commitments pending the outcome.

Looking more closely at our SaaS results. We’re seeing growing usage by our largest and most successful customers, especially for live sports, partially offset by the loss of a couple of mid tier streaming customers who lost content rights and/or ran into financial problems. Driven by the success we continue to have with our Tier 1 SaaS customers, we’ve continued to invest and innovate to new streaming related technology. Our new in stream personalized ad technology was a huge hit with the recent NAB show. For those of you unfamiliar with in stream advertising, it’s the creative insertion of personalized ads while viewers are still watching live action programs versus the traditional ads that are simply inserted into programming breaks. And based on this and other unique technical capabilities, our pipeline of opportunities with new and existing sports focused streaming customers is stronger than it has been since we launched SaaS activity.

The marriage of high quality stream live sports with personalized ads and experiences continues to look to us and our media customers like the real winner. That said, we also recognize marketplace headwinds affecting appliance sales remain persistent industry wide and so we’re taking action to restructure and streamline. As a result of these actions and our continuing confidence in our streaming sales growth plan, we’re increasing our full year segment EBITDA outlook. And with that, now over to you Walter for a deeper discussion of our results, actions and outlook.

Walter Jankovic: Thanks, Patrick. 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 Q1 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 Web site. Our first quarter results were consistent with our expectations. Additionally, we exceeded the midpoint of revenue guidance in broadband. I’ll call out some of our first quarter highlights here on Slide 7. For the quarter, we reported total revenue of $122.1 million.

We also reported EPS of zero cents, bookings of $146.1 million, a strong book-to-bill of 1.2 and a record backlog and deferred revenue of $677.8 million. Before reviewing our first quarter financials in more detail and providing detailed Q2 and full year 2024 guidance, I’d like to highlight a few key points regarding our guidance. Regarding broadband, we are reaffirming our FY24 revenue guidance range of $460 million to $500 million. As we do each quarter, we closely evaluate the latest customer information, forecasts and commitments just prior to our earnings call. Although, the mix of customer business has changed from our prior guidance, in total, we expect to meet our FY24 revenue guidance range. At the midpoint of our reaffirmed FY24 broadband guidance, we expect revenue to increase 24% year-over-year.

Based on expected momentum in the second half of 2024, we continue to anticipate 2025 broadband revenue growth will accelerate on a year-over-year basis. As Nim mentioned earlier, we are well positioned with our leading technology, strong backlog and our customer success to drive continued multiyear growth. With regards to video, we are increasing our FY24 EBITDA guidance due to actions we are taking to improve profitability, which I will discuss in more detail in a few minutes. Turning to Slide 8. Total Q1 revenue was $122.1 million, down nearly 23% year-over-year and 27% on a sequential basis. This was in line with the updated guidance we provided in early April and above the midpoint of the original guidance we gave on our last earnings call.

Looking more closely at broadband, Q1 revenue was $78.9 million a decrease of 21% year-over-year and consistent with our guidance. As anticipated, during the first quarter, we saw reduced shipments from a large Tier 1 customer. In Video, Q1 revenue was $43.2 million with lower appliance sales compared to last year due to the factors Patrick mentioned earlier. At the same time, Video revenue included SaaS revenue of $12.9 million, an 11% year-over-year increase and representing 29.9% of segment revenue for the quarter. Video SaaS revenue growth continues to be driven by live sports streaming expansions and new customer wins. In the first quarter, we had two customers representing greater than 10% of total revenue with Comcast representing 29% of total revenue and Charter representing 17% of total revenue.

Total company gross margin was 52.5% for Q1 ’24 above the high end of our original guidance range, and reflecting sequential gross margin improvement in the Broadband business segment. Broadband gross margin was 47.5% for Q1 ’24, up 510 basis points sequentially and down 260 basis points year-over-year due to product mix. Video gross margin was 61.6% in Q1 ’24, up 120 basis points year-over-year and down 300 basis points from an all time segment record in Q4 ’23, mainly due to macroeconomic headwinds. Moving down the income statement on Slide 9. Q1 ’24 operating expenses were $62.8 million, down 5% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 ’24 was $4.1 million comprised of $10.4 million from Broadband and negative $6.4 million from Bideo. Adjusted EBITDA for broadband exceeded our expectations while Video came in at the low end of our expectations due to the lower revenue.

This all translated into Q1 ’24 EPS of $0.00 per share in line with our previous guidance and compared with $0.13 in Q4 ’23 and $0.12 per share for Q1 ’23. We ended the first quarter of 2024 with a calculated diluted weighted average share count of 118.1 million compared to 115.7 million in Q4 ’23 and 117.8 million in Q1 ’23. The sequential increase is primarily due to the increased convertible debt dilution, partially offset by share buybacks. Turning to the order book. Q1 bookings were $146.1 million. The book-to-bill ratio was strong at 1.2 for the quarter. For Q4 ’23 and Q1 ’23, our book-to-bill ratios were 1.2 and 2.1 respectively. As we stated previously, over time we expect the ratio to normalize and approach the historical benchmark of greater than 1.

Turning to the balance sheet on Slide 10. We ended Q1 ’24 with cash of $84.3 million, which was flat compared to Q4 ’23. Cash from operations provided $26.8 million due predominantly to a decrease in accounts receivable from collections, partially offset by the net loss in the quarter. We also used $21.7 million during the first quarter for share repurchases, which I’ll discuss in more detail shortly. Turning to accounts receivable and days sales outstanding. At the end of Q1 ’24, DSO was 78 compared to 76 in Q4 ’23 and 50 in the prior year period. The prior year period was lower due to a large customer taking an early pay discount. Days inventory on hand was 134 days at the end of Q1 ’24 compared to 89 at the end of Q4 ’23 and 163 at the end of Q1 ’23.

The inventory increased $2.6 million in the quarter sequentially as a result of higher in feed following strong sales in Q4. Turning to capital allocation. Our top priority remains driving our future growth. When appropriate, we will strategically invest in building inventory as we’ve done in the past to meet strong demand. In line with this strategy, in December ’23, we closed a five year $160 million credit facility that included a $120 million revolving credit line and a $40 million delayed draw term loan. Subsequent to the end of first quarter, on April 18th, we redeemed entirely the $115.5 million in convertible notes outstanding, repaying the principal in cash by using our credit facility, and the value over par was distributed with approximately $4.6 million in shares.

As of today, we have drawn down $115 million on this credit facility. Additionally, with our enhanced liquidity position, during Q1 ’24, we bought back $21.7 million or approximately $1.7 million in shares at an average price of $13.07. To date, we have repurchased $26.8 million of the $100 million approved under our repurchase program. 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 leads and regulatory requirements. Also as mentioned during our last earnings call, 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 million going forward.

We believe we have sufficient available liquidity to continue funding our growth plans while returning capital to our shareholders through increased stock repurchases. At the end of Q1, total backlog and deferred revenue was a record $677.8 million. Our strong backlog reflects continued demand from our large broadband customers and growing Video SaaS commitments. Around 54% of our backlog and deferred revenue has customer request dates for shipments of products and for providing services within the next 12 months. Lastly, we generated $24.9 million in free cash flow during the quarter. Before reviewing our guidance, just a few comments regarding our Video business. As previously announced on April 8, ’24, following a formal strategic review of our Video business, our Board of Directors concluded its review and determined that Harmonic would retain the business.

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 to this go forward strategy, we are implementing a restructuring program to achieve cost savings in this business. Many of these initiatives are already underway and we expect the vast majority of them to be completed no later than Q3 of this year. We currently expect to incur approximately $17 million of restructuring costs related to these actions in 2024. We expect to achieve approximately $18 million in savings in FY24 as a result of these actions and approximately $28 million in savings on an annualized basis in FY25.

We believe these actions are necessary to better align the Video business with our go forward strategy. Due to these actions, we’re increasing our FY24 Video EBITDA guidance. At the same time, we are being conservative and reducing our FY24 Video revenue guidance to reflect ongoing video market weakness, which we expect to persist throughout FY24. Once this restructuring is completed, we believe the Video business will be able to achieve breakeven EBITDA at below $180 million of revenue per year. With that, let’s now review our non-GAAP guidance for the second quarter, beginning on Slide 11. We expect broadband to deliver revenue between $85 million to $95 million, gross margins between 47% to 48% due to product mix, gross profit between $40 million to $46 million and adjusted EBITDA between $11 million to $15 million.

For the full year, we expect revenue between $460 million to $500 million, gross margins between 46.5% to 48.5%, gross profit between $214 million to $243 million and adjusted EBITDA between $95 million to $119 million. For Broadband, we continue to expect to see a return to top line growth in the second half of the year and the potential to hit record quarterly revenue during that timeframe. For our Video segment in Q2, we expect revenue in the range of $40 million to $45 million, gross margin in the range of 62% to 63%, gross profit in the range of $25 million to $28 million and adjusted EBITDA to range from negative $5 million to negative $2 million. For the full year, we expect revenue between $185 million to $195 million, gross margins between 62% to 64%, gross profit between $115 million to $125 million and adjusted EBITDA to range from zero to $5 million.

For Video, we continue to be conservative reflecting the factors I mentioned earlier. Turning to Slide 12. For the second quarter of 2024, we expect total company revenue in the range of $125 million to $140 million, gross margin in the range of 51.8% to 52.9%, gross profit to range from $65 million to $74 million, adjusted EBITDA to range from $6 million to $13 million, a weighted average diluted share count of $116.8 million and EPS to range from 0 dollars to $0.05. And for the full year, we expect revenue between $645 million to $695 million, gross margins between 51% to 52.9%, gross profit between $329 million to $368 million, adjusted EBITDA between $95 million to $124 million, a weighted average diluted share count of $118.5 million and EPS to range from $0.51 to $0.71 per share.

In summary, we reported first quarter results in line with guidance. We believe our broadband segment continues to be well positioned for future growth. In addition with our restructuring actions, we believe our video segment will be better positioned for long term growth and profitability. And lastly, before turning it over to Patrick, I’ll ask everyone to mark your calendars. On June 13th, we will be hosting a Virtual Analyst Day event similar to the ones we have held in the past. During this event, we will provide multiyear updates for both our Broadband and Video business segments. Please stay tuned for additional details as we get closer to the date. Thank you everyone for your attention today. And now, I’ll turn it back to Patrick for final remarks before we open up the call for questions.

Patrick Harshman: Okay. Thanks, Walter. In summary, Harmonic delivered another solid quarter. Our order book, competitive position and customer relationships are stronger than ever and we continue to be uniquely positioned for sustained growth. And finally, on a personal note, I’ve been privileged to work alongside my talented and committed Harmonic colleagues, some great customers and shareholders who both challenged and supported me. And to all of you, I want to again say thank you and to convey my view that the best is still to come for Harmonic. And with that, let’s, as Walter said, open up the call now for your questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Simon Leopold with Raymond James.

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Q&A Session

Simon Leopold: Patrick, if this is the last call you’ll be doing, just wanted to thank you for the time you’ve worked with us. You’ve been a great help. And Nimrod, we’re looking forward to resuming and expanding relationship with you. Let’s get into the question, one of the things I wanted to see if we could explore was Harmonic’s dependence on the evolution of amplifiers, particularly for the rollout of DOCSIS 4.0. I understand you’re not a manufacturer of the amplifiers, but want to understand how that affects your trajectory and what you’re assuming for the availability of both extended spectrum and full duplex amplifiers?

Patrick Harshman: So couple of things, Simon. First of all, any remote kind of PHY device and network expansion that operators that are going 4.0 are doing are always forward looking. And even if they put it in an area which is not 4.0, they would love to put something which is 4.0 upgradable for whenever the rest of the network will become ready to 4.0. Same thing as others are putting 4.0 amplifiers or passives and so forth. So that’s number one. Number two, and I think you should go back to what was kind of reported by the industry in terms of progress on the full duplex amplifiers. And I would go from the silicone to vendor and the operator, all of them have reported progress and a plan to go into field trials this year with the plan to have that in deployment going into ’25. So that’s our assumption based on everything that we’ve seen. And I guess many of you have visited the SCTE show in October. This is progressing really well.

Simon Leopold: And just maybe a quick follow-up. On the Video segment, I think Walter made a reference to Patrick’s comments as to some of the incremental weakness. And I understand some of the explanation is related to customers maybe pausing as the strategic review was underway. What I’m looking for is maybe a little bit of help bridging how much of the shortfall might be attributed to a pause and then what the other aspects might be leading to the lower full year outlook for Video?

Walter Jankovic: Simon, I’ll kick it off here. Just in regards to the expectations on the full year. As Patrick highlighted in the opening remarks, I mean, this was creating a pause with certain customers in terms of making decisions. Obviously, with the announcement that we made recently that’s opened up the conversations and there is an expectation that those conversations will move forward in terms of some of the business that was on hold. So I’d say from a full year guide perspective that the impact is marginal from that event and is more related to the headwinds that we’re continuing to see with regards especially to the appliance business.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of George Notter with Jefferies.

George Notter: I guess, I just wanted to ask about, there is a pretty significant ramp you guys have now for the balance of the year. I think on the Broadband side, I was looking at calculating about $310 million in sales in the second half versus about $169 million in the first half, and I’m certain that your two largest customers are probably big components of that. But could you give us any more sense for what you’re seeing in terms of pipeline activity, traction towards that second half ramp and anything that could give us a bit more confidence in it would be helpful?

Walter Jankovic: Maybe I’ll start and then I’ll ask Nimrod to provide some more color on that, George. First of all, from a customer standpoint, as I mentioned in the opening remarks, we’re obviously tracking very closely with our largest customers in terms of the expectations for the full year and especially the back half of the year from a demand perspective, from a supply chain, ensuring that we’re ready for the higher expected revenue in broadband. And in addition to those larger customers, we do have an expectation of growing the rest of the customer base beyond the two largest customers. And so we made some great traction in Q1 in terms of our revenue level from those other customers. And the team is highly focused in terms of continuing that momentum and building up the rest of the market opportunities and revenue in the back half.

And I’d like to turn it over to Nimrod to provide some color around what we’re seeing in the market and some of the very encouraging conversations we’re having with those other customers.

Nimrod Ben-Natan: And I think we talk a lot about DOCSIS 4.0 and some of the major customers that are driving that. But what we see through the rest of the market is an increased urgency to look into what we call modernizing the network. And whether you look at it competitively or just to keep up with bandwidth demand, they have to go, operators have to increase whether it’s the upstream or the downstream of the network. And I did touch on this, what we call boosted 3.1, which really gives you fiber speeds and we see more and more customers looking into that. This is now becoming available with availability of DOCSIS 4.0 modem, have nothing to do with amplifiers or nodes or anything like that, just a combination of a 4.0 modem with boosted capabilities of 3.1 network.

Also interesting and you may have heard other customers announcing retirement of legacy QAM video and moving to an old IP. This is freeing up a lot of bandwidth in the network, which they can now put into this boosted architecture. So we have a lot of these discussions and in fact, advanced stages in lab and field trials, and this is giving us the confidence for the rest of the market to follow.

George Notter: I assume that Charter is a big piece of the second half ramp. I know those guys have talked about, for example, the NextGen Cable Strategies Conference. They were talking about kind of reaccelerating their or accelerating their remote DAA build in July. Is that still something that seems doable from your perspective?

Nimrod Ben-Natan: We cannot comment on any specific customer activity. I think, specifically, if you look at the two major customers, both of them have announced their earnings last week and they did provide an update. So you can follow-up on that. I believe Charter talked about completing their upgrade by ’26. I cannot comment specifically on July or any specific date.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Steven Frankel with Rosenblatt Securities.

Steven Frankel: I wonder if you might give us a little more color on the seven-figure fiber-to-the-home deal that you talked about during your commentary. Was this a new customer or is this within one of your existing [cOS] customers today?

Walter Jankovic: So it’s an existing Tier 1 international customer. And what’s exciting for us about this is that this is adoption of new fiber product generation that we announced during SCTE last year, which is kind of the second phase of our fiber product introduction. And we’re excited because this is being adopted by a major Tier 1 customer for this new architecture.