Vecima Networks Inc

TSX:VCM

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Hello. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome to Vecima Networks Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2025 Results Conference Call and Webcast.

[Operator Instructions]

The conference is being recorded.

[Operator Instructions]

Presenting today on behalf of Vecima Networks are Sumit Kumar, President and CEO; and Judd Schmid, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call will begin with executive commentary on Vecima's financial and operational performance for the fourth quarter and year-end fiscal 2025 results. Lastly, the call will finish with a question-and-answer period for analysts and institutional investors. The press release announcing the company's fourth quarter and year-end fiscal 2025 results as well as detailed supplemental investor information are posted on Vecima's website at www.vecima.com under the Investor Relations heading.

The highlights provided in this call should be understood in conjunction with the company's audited annual consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes for the year ended June 30, 2025, and 2024. Certain statements in this conference call and webcast may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities law from which Vecima's actual results could differ. Consequently, attendees should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding management's intentions, belief or current expectations with respect to market and general economic conditions, future sales and revenue expectations, future costs and operating performance.

These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict and/or are beyond our control. Vecima disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

Please review the cautionary language in the company's fourth quarter earnings report and press release for fiscal 2025 as well as its annual information form dated September 25, 2025, regarding the various factors, assumptions and risks that could cause actual results to differ. These documents are available on Vecima's website at www.vecima.com under the Investor Relations heading and on SEDAR at www.sedarplus.ca.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kumar to proceed with his remarks. Please go ahead.

[Sumit Kumar, executive]

Good morning, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'll start today with some commentary on the fiscal year and the fourth quarter. Judd will follow with a review of our financial results, and then I'll return to discuss our outlook before we take your questions.

Fiscal 2025 was a complex but pivotal year for Vecima. We made great strides with product and technology advancements, secured major new contracts and agreements and completed an important tuck-in acquisition, which combined have positioned Vecima for years of profitable growth. In the VBS segment, many operators were preparing for broad network upgrades as part of the transition to next-generation platforms like DOCSIS 4.0. These transitions are complex, but by year-end, a number of our customers have completed their field level qualifications and begun their rollouts, supported by our solutions. This translated into a 7.5% sequential strengthening of our quarterly sales pace in Q4 as compared to Q3.

While the year culminated with these important rollouts getting underway, it also brought some timing challenges, both in our VBS and our Content Delivery segments. On the top line, the net effect was a generally flat year for consolidated revenues as we managed through the period of building upgrade readiness while still achieving a record year for Entra family sales. On the bottom line, we work to push through some in-the-period margin headwinds. As we anticipated, our highly successful EN9000 rollout was an important contributor to the year's revenues, but temporarily changed the margin profile of our product mix in fiscal '25. EN9000 pays many long-term dividends by housing successive generations of higher-margin access modules in later periods. But when it's purchased on a stand-alone basis, it typically carries lower margins until paired with the software-driven access modules.

We also faced an unusually steep decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, an almost $0.06 drop. For Vecima, this meant raw materials purchased when the rate was higher, were sold as finished goods when it was lower with a related margin impact. While the U.S. to Canadian dollar exchange rate volatility was particularly pronounced between Q3 and Q4, likely driven by trade and tariff uncertainty at the time, the U.S. dollar since stabilized in Q1. So we expect that the significant FX-driven impact was temporary. Additionally, while noncash, our quarterly and full year bottom line reflects approximately $15 million of noncash deferred development impairments and inventory charges we recorded in the fourth quarter.

Vecima's extensive and multiyear R&D program has helped us build a remarkable portfolio of cable and fiber access solutions. And with ambitious product development programs like ours that are pursued in tandem with our customers' evolving technology road maps, it's not unusual that not every variant ends up being adopted at scale. As we approach year-end and commence our annual operating and strategic planning process, we made a disciplined assessment of our capitalized R&D balances and product inventories, resulting in these onetime noncash charges. I want to add that in most cases, the charges relate to certain cable and fiber access solutions that have since evolved to very successful alternative solutions developed or acquired by Vecima.

One example is Remote MAC-PHY, which came to us as part of the Nokia technology portfolio and has now migrated to Remote PHY and more recently to vCMTS as well. On the fiber access side, the chassis-based platform we also inherited from Nokia was -- has migrated towards our shelf-based platform, EXS1610, which is both 10-gig EPON and XGS-PON capable and delivers industry-leading feature sets. Remember that the Nokia acquisition, which cost us just CAD 5.9 million, brought Vecima an entire suite of cable and fiber access platforms that has to date driven revenue of approximately $400 million. Additionally, in the case of the variance I mentioned, we do expect to ultimately translate and monetize these inventories on a cash basis. That's already the case today with continued uptake regularly occurring across multiple customers and programs for both of those platforms.

So as a result of the various factors, we ended fiscal '25 with adjusted EBITDA of $28.9 million, a solid result in light of the FX and other headwinds. And together with the noncash charges and write-down, we reported a net loss of $0.73 per share or an adjusted net loss of $0.18 per share with the onetime noncash charges removed. Mind you, the $0.18 still includes $0.16 of noncash share-based comp and noncash foreign exchange losses for the year. Overall, we weathered the challenges while maintaining our strong position for growth going forward.

In our Video and Broadband Solutions segment, we advanced on multiple fronts. One of the year's most important achievements was our entry into the virtual Cable Modem Termination Systems or vCMTS market and the subsequent multiyear agreement with Cox Communications, which we signed in Q4. The significance of vCMTS lies in its ability to virtualize and definitively enhance the traditional hardware-based CMTS and CCAP infrastructure. It offers much greater flexibility, cost efficiency, reliability, scalability and performance together with a cloud-native architecture built entirely in software. Dell'Oro Group forecasts that the annual vCMTS market will reach about USD 350 million by 2028. Our agreement with Cox now firmly positions Vecima as just -- of 1 of just 3 vendors worldwide offering a vCMTS solution of the quality and the sophistication that's demanded by Tier 1 broadband service providers.

Cox selected our ENTRA vCMTS software to upgrade its cable access network, migrating away from the limitations of legacy hardware CMTSs to the vCMTS paired with Remote PHY DAA nodes. Our progress on DOCSIS 4.0 Remote PHY development during the year builds on this and several other engagements across vCMTS and Remote PHY for Vecima. The design wins secured for both DAA nodes and vCMTS in fiscal '25 are now expected to be significant growth drivers for us in fiscal year 2026 and for years to follow. Another highlight of fiscal '25 was our tuck-in acquisition of Falcon V Systems, which brought us 2 new software platforms. The first, Principal Core is a virtual orchestration technology that aims to enable operators to converge cable, fiber and even mobile networks into a single seamless access platform.

The access test suite and simulators allow operators to validate and deploy DAA software upgrades at scale, dramatically speeding time to market for next-generation rollouts. Both solutions found quick traction with Tier 1 operators in fiscal 2025, for charter licensing Principal Core as part of a multiyear contract and additional customers engaging with the access Test Suite and platforms.

Just to provide some early metrics on the financials, we acquired Falcon in October for CAD 3.9 million net of cash received. And in the 9 months, it contributed to fiscal '25, we generated revenues of $5.7 million and pretax net income of $3.1 million. I've already touched on the success of our EN9000 platform, of which we've sold over 30,000 nodes during the year. In Q4, we announced the launch of our new EN3400, which provides a more compact and condensed version of the EN9000 that's designed for multiple unit dwellings and enterprise markets, which have emerged as new and incremental use cases above the residential cable access segment covered by EN9000. We expect the EN3400 to be a meaningful contributor to our fiscal '26 results.

And it's noteworthy that we design and are bringing this incremental platform to market in a few short quarters in rapid response to a specific customer need and opportunity in an additional addressable market. And we expect similar performance from our new Entra Power Holdover Modules, which we began deploying in fiscal '25. This super-capacitor-enabled power backup for our cable and fiber access platforms is already generating strong demand. In our Entra Optical family, fiscal '25 was a year of expanding what was already the industry's most complete and flexible offering of fiber access solutions, where we've been the market share leader in Remote OLTs for multiple consecutive years.

Additionally, we launched the vPON Manager, our new cloud-based orchestration platform and more recently, the EEM210, a stand-alone 10-gig EPON module that fits both new and existing nodes and supports incremental fiber-to-the-home expansion for operators. Next week, we'll be taking another major step forward with Entra fiber access as we demonstrate concurrent 50-gig PON and 10-gig EPON over the same optical port at the SCTE Tech Expo happening next week. This is the world's first achievement, which will give broadband service providers the flexibility to add 50-gig PON when and as it's needed while continuing to scale 10-gig PON and preserve those investments.

Overall, fiscal '25 was an exceptional year of development for the VBS segment. And while we are further building out our leading Entra portfolio, our customer engagements continue to broaden and deepen. By year-end, our engagements for Entra had climbed to 136, up from 115 at the start of the year. Importantly, and as I mentioned, by year-end, some of the largest Entra customers have begun their broad-scale DAA rollouts, driving renewed momentum and a new all-time high record for Entra family annual sales in fiscal '25. Fourth quarter VBS sales increased 22% as compared to Q3 and are poised to keep building in fiscal '26.

Now looking at other segments in the business. In our Content Delivery and Storage segment, fiscal '25 was a mixed year with performance peaking in the third quarter, including an extraordinary 70% margin on increased software sales that quarter for CDS before softening in the fourth quarter as a result of some project timing delays. We always note again that CDS is a lumpy by its nature segment, and it certainly reflected that through fiscal 2025. That said, it was also a year of achievements for CDS, including expansion of our Dynamic Ad Insertion or DAI platform. We had deployments with multiple customers, enabling them to monetize video more effectively by providing advertising insertion capabilities and a path to even greater monetization opportunities for video going forward with the targeting of ads based on viewership characteristics.

We also advanced our Open CDN platform as we develop the platform further and the engagements further. Open Caching allows operators to monetize the millions of over-the-top streaming video packets that are crossing their networks for free today, while at the same time, greatly increasing the viewing quality and reducing caching costs for the streamers and content providers. We expect this technology to evolve into a material growth driver in the longer term for CDS. Additionally, we formed a partnership with Digital Harmonic for its KeyFrame Media Optimization Solution, which improves video quality while reducing bit rates and costs by leveraging generative AI.

Turning to Telematics. We continue to build on this segment's profitable recurring revenue contribution as we advanced uptake for our successful movable asset tracking platform. One of the highlights of the year was signing a major national restoration company, which added over 1,200 vehicles and 20,000 asset tags in a single contract to Telematics. By year-end, the Telematics segment had over 120,000 assets under management, including over 20,000 vehicles and over 100,000 asset tags. Taken together, it was a significant year of strategic advances for Vecima that now position us very strongly for fiscal 2026 and for many years to follow.

I'll return to talk more about this in a few moments. But first, I'll pass the call to Judd to provide our Q4 financial review. Judd?

[Judson Schmid, executive]

Thanks, Sumit. Good morning to everyone who's on the call with us today. I'll be reviewing our fourth quarter financial performance in more detail. And for the purposes of this call, I'll assume that everyone has seen our Q4 and year-end fiscal 2025 news release, MD&A and financial statements posted on Vecima's website. Starting with consolidated sales, we generated fourth quarter revenue of $68.8 million, while that's up 7.5% on a sequential quarterly basis, it was 21% lower year-over-year. Our Video and Broadband Solutions segment accounted for $58.1 million of total sales with our next-generation Entra DAA products generating $54.6 million and Commercial Video contributing the $3.4 million balance.

As Sumit noted, we achieved strong quarter-over-quarter momentum with Entra sales up 26% compared to Q3. On a year-over-year basis, however, VBS and Entra sales were down 22% and 20%, respectively, compared to last year's record fourth quarter results. In our Content Delivery and Storage segment, we experienced a significant quarterly revenue fluctuation with Q4 sales of $8.6 million, decreasing 39% from Q3's strong performance and down 22% from a year ago. As we continue to reiterate, every customer's purchasing cycle for CDS products is different, which results in the lumpiness that we see in quarter-to-quarter CDS revenues.

In our Telematics segment, we increased fourth quarter sales by 18% year-over-year to $2.1 million. This reflects the significant increase in the number of tags and assets now being monitored. Quarter-over-quarter, sales were 7% lower, which reflected a change in revenue recognition from an acceleration of certain asset tag sales that occurred in Q3.

Turning back to consolidated results. Gross profit for the quarter decreased to $18.8 million from $41.9 million last year. Lower sales and lower gross margin compared to the record fourth quarter last year were key factors as was the $7 million noncash write-down of inventory to net realizable value. This write-down, along with our impairment charge in operating expenses, both derived from our reassessment of certain historical expenditures in the cable and fiber access solutions that were replaced with alternative solutions developed or acquired by Vecima.

Our reported consolidated fourth quarter gross margin was 27.3% as compared to 47.9% in Q4 fiscal '24 and 47.7% in Q3 fiscal '25. This change was caused by the U.S. dollar to Canadian dollar FX volatility, together with product and customer mix and the noncash write-down of certain inventory to its net realizable value. Adjusted to exclude the onetime inventory write-down and other items, our fourth quarter adjusted gross margin was 37.4%.

Turning to fourth quarter operating expenses. These increased $6 million year-over-year to $35.8 million. An impairment expense on deferred development assets of $6.9 million was the key factor in this increase, together with higher finished goods inventory allowances, additional operating costs related to the addition of the Falcon business and higher deferred development amortization. mitigating these increases were savings from our Q2 restructuring program. Excluding the impairment charges, underlying operating expenses decreased by $900,000 year-over-year. The notable changes include a $2.1 million decrease in G&A expense due to lower depreciation expense and decreased salary and bonus expense, a $300,000 increase in sales and marketing expenses, reflecting increased finished goods inventory allowances and a $1 million increase in R&D expenses to $12 million.

This is primarily a result of higher amortization of deferred development costs, additional R&D costs from our Falcon V business, partially offset by savings from our restructuring program, as noted, implemented in Q2. As we've noted on past calls, however, reported R&D expense in a period is typically different than the actual expenditure as some of our R&D expenditures are deferred until product commercialization. Adjusting for this, our actual cash R&D investment was $15.7 million or 23% of revenues in the fourth quarter, up from $15.6 million or 18% of revenues in Q4 last year, reflecting our strong emphasis on investing in our innovation pipeline and future product developments.

Looking at our bottom line results, the noncash impacts that we've talked about resulted in a reported fourth quarter operating loss of $17 million compared to operating income of $12.2 million in the same period last year. As expected, foreign exchange losses incurred in the second quarter reversed in the second half as related to the impact of a stronger Canadian dollar on our outstanding U.S.-denominated accounts receivable and debt.

Finally, we reported a fourth quarter net loss of $13.2 million or a loss per share of $0.54 compared to net income of $8.3 million or $0.34 per share in the same period of fiscal '24. Additionally, our adjusted EPS loss for the fourth quarter is $0.05 per share after backing out the impacts of the noncash E&O inventory reserves, impairment and other charges. This compared to an adjusted EPS of $0.29 per share in the same period of fiscal '24.

Now turning to the balance sheet. We ended the fourth quarter with $3.4 million in cash, up from $2.1 million in the same period last year. Working capital of $51.2 million decreased from $73.1 million in Q4 of fiscal '24 and $60.3 million at the end of last quarter. This slight decline from last quarter was primarily due to lower inventory and accounts receivable. The components of working capital can be subject to significant swings from quarter-to-quarter. Our product shipments can be lumpy, reflecting the requirements of our major customers. Other timing issues like contracts with greater than 30-day payment terms also affect working capital, particularly if shipments are back-end weighted for a quarter.

Lastly, cash flow provided by operations for the fourth quarter decreased to $18.9 million from $36.1 million during the same period last year. However, full year operating cash flows increased significantly to $54.6 million in fiscal '25 compared to only $2.7 million in fiscal '24, primarily reflecting a near $70 million increase in cash flows from changes in net working capital. Our slow yet steady ability to generate cash over the last several quarters has brought our net debt position down from a high of $92 million in Q3 of fiscal '24 to $53.6 million at the end of fiscal '25. Our goals for fiscal '26 include continued paydown of our debt and further strengthening of our balance sheet.

Now on a final note, our Board of Directors approved a quarterly dividend of $0.055 per share payable on November 3, 2025, to shareholders as of record as at October 10. It's important to note that this dividend will be designated as an eligible dividend for Canadian income tax purposes.

Now back to Sumit.

[Sumit Kumar, executive]

Thank you, Judd. So as Judd reinforced, Vecima's sequential quarterly revenue momentum began to build in Q4 as operators began their rollouts and has continued into Q1. As we approach the conclusion of the first quarter of fiscal '26, we're tracking to another strong quarter for the top line. We also anticipate a return to strong annual growth while achieving new record quarterly run rates as we exit the year. We expect to pair the sales growth with improved gross margin throughout the year, reflecting an expected normalization of foreign exchange volatility and a more typical product mix.

Moreover, as we add additional higher-margin products to the mix through the year, we anticipate a further gradual strengthening of gross profit margins. We expect our VBS segment to lead the growth in fiscal '26 as our customers' network upgrades roll out, their existing inventories come into some better balance and our new Entra products and platforms provide added revenue. We also see a stronger year ahead for the Content Delivery and Storage segment, supported by contributions from our new solutions as well as continued IPTV expansions with new and existing customers. Although again, as we always know, quarter-to-quarter performance in the CDS segment tends to be lumpy.

And in our Telematics segment, we're anticipating its typical steady and profitable performance from the recurring software subscriptions business on vehicles and assets will carry forward. Moving forward, we have momentum, and we're highly confident in Vecima's future. We're entering this new fiscal year with the industry's broadest and deepest portfolio of innovative, interoperable cable and fiber access products. And we have multiple engines supporting our growth as global adoption of DAA definitively ramps up and IPTV continues to expand. We look forward to translating this into our new momentum in our financial performance in fiscal 2026 and beyond.

That concludes our formal comments for today, and we'd now be happy to take questions. Operator?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

As there appears to be no questions, this concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.