Ceragon Networks Ltd. (NASDAQ:CRNT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Alex Henderson: And then if I were to look at your OpEx, obviously, you’ve got some big moving items here. You’ve got increases in your compensation that has to happen every year, but you’ve also got the shekel swing. I had two other companies report out of Israel this morning. And they both said they were benefiting enough to offset the rise in costs and both guided to essentially flat OpEx. Can you give us some sense of what your OpEx is expected to do over the course of ’23?

Ronen Stein: We do expect the OpEx to increase a bit. According to our growth trajectory and also the improvement in the gross margin, we will also increase a bit the OpEx. But of course, the ForEx impact will improve.

Alex Henderson: So two last questions, and I’ll cede the floor and they’re both related. Do you think at this point that you would expect to be profitable throughout the four quarters of ’23? And do you expect to build or eat backlog in ’23? Thanks.

Doron Arazi: So first of all, yes, our expectation is to be profitable throughout 2023. In terms of backlog, basically, we just finalized our AOP for 2023, just 1.5 months ago and the plan is, on the one hand, to leverage the strong backlog and hopefully improve our top line as supply chain issues continue to ease up. But at the same token, we are putting a strong and high target for booking. So all-in-all, we want the situation to be very positive for us at the end of 2023, where the backlog would probably, maybe stay the same or even grow a little bit, but not because of revenue conversion issues, but more because of more bookings and more business.

Alex Henderson: Great. I’ll cede the floor and get back in the queue. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Alex, you’re back up. Please go ahead.

Alex Henderson: All right. So let’s talk about the flow of orders here. Obviously, fourth quarter orders were all the way back in when you announced your third quarter would be down from the third quarter rate and you had a big, big slug of orders in the third quarter. But with that order decline, the question is the back half, I think your backlog increased, can you give us some sense of where your backlog is as a percent of four quarter product sales? It sounds like it’s still running at something over 50% of the full year for 2023.

Doron Arazi: Yeah, I think 50% is a good rule of thumb for the level of backlog we are having at the beginning of 2023.

Alex Henderson: And if you were to look at your pipeline of deal flow, you’ve good orders over the course of ’23, duration stretched a little bit. As parts become more available, do you expect any change in the time line for the expected delivery dates to have an impact on order rates? Or do you have such a strong pipeline that, that’s not an issue for you?

Doron Arazi: I think that some of the behaviors we have seen during ’20 and — sorry, ’21 and ’22 would probably change a little bit. As you are actually may be alluding, obviously, when people are understanding that the time lines are improving, they will not be in such a rush in order to secure time lines. Said that, we be a very nice funnel. And therefore, it’s hard for me to say that there will be a specific impact as a result of this change in behavior on our bookings and our ability to convert into revenue.

Alex Henderson: So if I were to look at the expectations going into the first quarter, are we expecting orders to be a book-to-bill at or above 1? Or is this seasonally a very tough quarter to call, obviously. Maybe you could look at the first half, give us some sense of what to think the book-to-bill might look like in that time frame.