Casa Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CASA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Ed Durkin: Yes, yeah.

Tim Savageaux: Okay, great, sorry about that. Following on the cable discussion, I mean it looks like I have chartered 13% of revenues year-to-date. I mean assuming they are you know somewhere in the mid-teens for the year, you know given your guidance for next year. Do you expect the cable segment to be able to grow based on other run rate business, or are you making any particular assumption about declines at that major North American customer that maybe, well restrained growth in cable? I have a couple of follow-ups.

Ed Durkin: Yeah, so again, we have a global installed base of top cable MSOs. All of them are satisfied customers with high CSAT. As it relates to this North American customer we mentioned, we are contracted for a set amount of annual maintenance support revenue which is in our plan. It’s contracted and guaranteed. We did not include any product revenues from this major North American customer in our 2023 plan. So to the extent we have success there later in the year, that would be upside. I think our cable business in 2023 versus 2022 can grow modestly on the strength of the many other cable MSO customers we have globally, as well as our new and expanded virtual CCAP, RPD cable next gen class offering. So I think cable will be a modest growth line of business for us with no dependency on this major North American customer.

Tim Savageaux: Okay, great. And I just missed a backlog. I wonder if you might mind repeating that exiting year deferred revenue numbers.

A – Ed Durkin: Sure thing. So we entered 2023 with $153 million in backlog product and service orders, including the contracted 2023 billings under the Verizon 5G Mobile Edge computing contract, and that brings our total backlog deferred revenue and the remaining $96 million of future billings under the Verizon MEC contract for 2024 and beyond to roughly $286 million. In addition, we have approximately $55 million of our closed contracted business for our 4G, 5G enterprise small cell radios with a major North America network operator which we closed in Q3, and under that new contract would get POs on an annual, as ordered basis. So as such we don’t include it in the backlog and deferred revenue numbers I just mentioned, so that is incremental.

So entering 2023 I think the punch line is we’re in much better shape as compared to 2022 relative to a backlog that can ship and supply chain and contracted deals with major Tier 1 CSPs and we’re going to continue to focus on that and again drive renewed growth and net adjusted EBITDA positive results in 2023.

Tim Savageaux: Got it. And back on the cable side, I mean I assume you know what you’re referring to in terms of the possible or second half expectations is kind of the next gen kind of virtualized, remote PHY oriented aspect of that operator’s upgrade plan. Just wondering if you can confirm that. And you know I know this is a tough one to answer, but I’ll ask it anyway. I mean is there €“ you know had that come through as expected, you know what would your guidance look like for this year?

Ed Durkin: So, we originally had anticipated second half core and RPD, REMOTE PHY business from this. We were surprised when we learned they had decided to go in a different direction. Obviously our guidance would have been meaningfully higher. We are not giving up on the customer or the customer relationship, but that’s the status of it as we stand today and we wanted to be transparent and transparent on the matter. Jerry, I don’t know if you have any other €“ anything else you would add, but you know I think that’s where we stand today.

Jerry Guo: Yes, Eddie covered it well. You know we did have a much higher guidance in our original plan. We revised it to basically reflect a conservative approach at this point.