CommScope Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:COMM) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Meta Marshall: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Tal Liani of Bank of America. Your line is open.

Tal Liani: Hello? Can you hear me?

Charles Treadway: Yep, we can.

Tal Liani: Oh, perfect. When things come back, one of the concerns we have is that what we’re seeing now has a few components. One of the components is inventory correction as you mentioned, and backlog correction. But on the other hand, the environment is not supposed to go back to where we’ve seen in the last two years because the cycle is down substantially. It’s kind of over in certain cases. So the question is, when you look at your growth this year and you’re looking at your projections for the next few years, do you think that these kind of environments that are, these segments are related to CapEx? Do you think that they can grow? If you neutralize the correction that we’re seeing now, do you think they can grow in the next two years given the spending plans of carriers?

Charles Treadway: Yes, I would start by saying that obviously visibility’s limited, but that being said, and in the CCS business we are seeing inventories start to normalize and we believe will be normalized in the second half. And we think that, as customers are talking to us about the mid and long-term, they’re positive about what they’re seeing and suggesting growth there. But in addition to that we’re going to be helped by the BEAD funding and we see that BEAD funding coming through in the second half of 2024 and 2025. So I think in the CCS cabling connectivity, our fiber business I see positives there. In terms of the OWN business and Telcos we see a lot of aggressive managing of cash. It could take several quarters to recover, and there I’m not seeing like some big pickup, but I do, I am more optimistic on the fiber and fiber connectivity side.

Tal Liani: Got it. Shifting to something else, if I can ask another question, one of the things that is impacting your stock is of course, the debt deposition. And I know you said you’ll provide more clarity in the next until the next call, but can you share with us kind of the way you consider, you, on the slide, you have the next five years of, of maturities. What’s your long-term plan with maturities? What are you trying, how much do you think you can pay down? And then what is the general, what are the possibilities in front of you to refinance and improve the balance sheet situation? Thanks.

Kyle Lorentzen: Yes, I mean, I think the, clearly we’re aware of the debt stack and we understand that, it’s putting pressure on the equity price. I think as we think about, how to deal with that, I think we’re very focused on the 25 maturities. I think when we think about the 25 maturities, I mean, we definitely have alternatives. And I think, we’ll get some more clarity on that as we move through the third quarter. Some of the alternatives that we have, I won’t go to all of them, but one of them is we do have some secured capacity that’s available to deal with the 25 maturities. As we think about the, longer debt stack, I mean, I think we still, as Chuck mentioned on, like the CCS business, I think we feel like the short-term is not reflective of what we see in the medium and long-term. And we feel like we’re well positioned as the markets come back to drive the EBITDA and the cash flow that we’ve talked about previously on calls.

Tal Liani: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Niknam of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Matthew Niknam: Hey thanks for taking the questions. Just two, if I could, first on orders, if you can speak to maybe the cadence and what you saw in terms of the progression over the course of the quarter and how that trended, did it deteriorate, and then how was July compared thus far? I think you mentioned maybe a little bit of moderation or modest improvement, but I’m just curious to get a little bit more unpacking in terms of what you’ve seen the last four months. And then just on OWN just to double click there, you mentioned there was one carrier unexpectedly stopping delivery of products for 60 days. Just wondering if that’s resumed or if there’s any additional context you can provide there? Thanks.