Earnings Labs

Extreme Networks, Inc. (EXTR)

Q1 2023 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 27, 2022

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Extreme Networks Q1 FY '23 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Stan Kovler, you may begin.

Stanley Kovler

Analyst

Thank you, Kevin. Welcome to Extreme Networks first quarter in 2023 earnings conference call. I'm Stan Kovler, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations. With me today are Extreme Networks' President and CEO, Ed Meyercord; and CFO, Rémi Thomas. We just distributed a press release and filed an 8-K detailing Extreme Networks' financial results for the quarter. For your convenience, a copy of the press release which includes our GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations is available in the Investor Relations section of our website at extremenetworks.com. I would like to remind you that during today's call, our discussion may include forward-looking statements about Extreme's future business, financial and operational results, growth expectations and strategies. All financial disclosures on this call will be on a non-GAAP basis, unless stated otherwise. We caution you not put [indiscernible] on these forward-looking statements as they involve risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these statements as of described in our risk factors in our 10-K report for the period ended June 30, 2022, as filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements made on this call reflect our analysis as of today and we have no plans or duty to update them as required except as required by law. Now, I will turn the call over to Extreme’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Ed Meyercord.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Thank you, Stan and thank you all for joining us this morning. We had a record quarter as demand for cloud-driven networking and for Extreme Solutions has never been stronger. Again, our share gains are evident by double-digit revenue growth, record revenue and continued growth of backlog which now sits at $555 million. The sequential increase in revenue and margins led to continued improvement in our operating model and we achieved EPS of $0.20 in Q1, up from $0.15 in Q4. We expect these bottom line earning trends to continue. The combination of our fabric and cloud solutions are driving significant differentiation for Extreme. Our fabric technology deployed in over 7,500 campus networks globally delivers network automation, hyper-segmentation and unmatched security. Today, our fabric provides simplicity and ease of use for local area network deployments from the campus core to the wireless edge. In calendar Q1, we're extending our fabric across the wide area network, bringing new features and security to our enhanced SD-WAN solution. With ExtremeCloud IQ, our customers have complete visibility and management of network devices and connected clients throughout the entire enterprise, end-to-end across local and wide area networks. The intelligence and automation tools we bring in our CoPilot license, such as digital twin and AIOps are game changers. Highlighting the value of our CoPilot solution, one of our customers is on record saying, with CoPilot I'm finding problems in the network that I didn't know existed and now I have readily available solutions that I didn't have without the tool. Both our fabric and cloud solutions stole the show at our oversubscribed sales kickoff event for direct sellers and channel partners where we hosted over 1,000 people in Boston in August. At Extreme, we have a unique focus in finding new ways for our customers to…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Alex Henderson with Needham. Your line is open.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

Thanks. I’m going to break that a little bit because I wanted to get some clarification on some of the numbers which are just pretty straightforward. Can you give us some guide on the interest line since you obviously have a lot of things moving around in there? And did you say the book-to-bill was 1.3, I’m getting 1.23 when I calculate it.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Product looks to be a little at 1.3, Alex.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

It was 1.3%, okay.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Yes, it was 1.4%. So the average is slightly higher.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

I see, I see. And the interest line?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Hold on, let me just bring that up. It keeps moving with 1-month LIBOR rate. You should assume about $5 million a quarter.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

The LIBOR rate going up 75 basis points this morning impacted you guys or ECB did?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

We do the reset on a monthly basis. So today's rate may not necessarily be the one that we'll have after November 9. But currently, it would be 330 plus 125 would be 455 [ph] if we use the last 1 month LIBOR reset that we have.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

Okay. If I could ask a couple of questions. Just -- those were just technical details. The first one is, I didn’t hear any mention of pricing. And I know pricing has gone up in the industry. I know you guys have increased price. Can you talk about where you are in terms of actually getting the price in the numbers this quarter as well as where you expect the pricing to look like? And one other clarification, you said you wanted to -- you thought your backlog would increase by year end. Do you mean increase from the start of the fiscal year? Or do you mean increase from the 555 [ph]?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Alex, I'll jump in and then, Rémi, you can back me up here. Alex, we expect backlog to increase each quarter throughout the remainder of our fiscal year. So we're expecting increases in December, March and June.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

Perfect.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

As it relates to pricing, we had a very modest and targeted price increase effective October 1. On the bookings side, we did see some pull-ins but it was much more muted than what we had last year. If you recall last year, we had a 12% price increase as of October 1 and that drove significant bookings. Rémi referenced that, over 70% growth in product bookings in EMEA which it is -- we were really excited to see that we were able to grow organically on top of that kind of comparable. So in general, we are in a -- we feel like we're in a strong position. Cisco has announced price increases. We remain under their umbrella. And then we've seen our other competitors follow suit. So we like where we are in terms of seeing the price increase in numbers. You'll see the most recent price increase, a small impact this quarter and then a larger impact in the following quarter. Rémi, I don't know if you want to add anything to that. Rémi Thomas: I was just going to add that with the exceptions of certain country where currency devaluations have impacted our ability for our customers to meet their budget, our price increase are holding edge. So we're not having to raise discounts to offset the price increase and so they really translated into an improvement in the overall net selling price of the company.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

So just to be clear, in the quarter, the price benefit was low single digits and you expect it to be what by the fourth quarter or fiscal year?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

There was -- I mean, there was an impact this quarter of the price increase that we made on April 1. However, the impact of the October 1 price increase was not felt in the September quarter.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

Clearly. But my point -- my question is what was the real impact of price increases in the quarter? Was it low single digit contribution to your revenue growth or some other number?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Yes, low single digit coming from prior price increases, correct.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

And you expect by the June quarter it will be 5%, 6%, 8%, 1%? What are your expectations for the realization of that when you talk about building backlog through the end of the year and the like?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

[Indiscernible] discount trends don't change, it would be low to mid-single digits.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

Low to mid-single digits. Thank you.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Thanks, Alex.

Operator

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst · Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

I’m going to assume that to me. It’s Eric from Lake Street Capital Markets. Just wanted to follow-up on the geographic commentary that you gave. You talked about bookings by geo with the Americas being up 20% and then mid-single digits for EMEA and APAC against a tough comp. Where should we think about that for fiscal year ‘23, given the revenue guide of 10% to 15%. How do you see the bookings growth across geographies for FY ‘23?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Total bookings growth across all geographies and products, services and subscription is expected to be in the high single digit. Rémi Thomas: Okay. And then combined with what's coming off the backlog, that's how we get to the revenue number of business.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst · Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Okay.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

I would say, Eric, we're not expecting -- we're expecting to grow backlog during the year. So in terms of how we get to our fiscal year growth, the expectation is that we are not reducing backlog but we're growing backlog. I just want to clarify that.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst · Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Yes. Okay. And then as far as the release in the gross margins, we’re seeing relief, you’ve qualified more component suppliers, you’ve got a little bit of breathing room on the expedite fee. But what’s really the -- it’s -- I’m looking for what’s the biggest contributor to the gross margin expansion as we go quarter-by-quarter.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Eric, that would be the reduction in expedite fees based on what we paid to our key suppliers of semiconductors and components as well as the reduction of freight cost which is still elevated today because most of the products that are produced out of China and Taiwan are shipped by air directly to El Paso which is our main hub. So the reduction of these two that are currently hurting gross margin is really what's going to drive the improvement over time.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst · Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Got it. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Paul Silverstein with Cowen. Your line is open.

Paul Silverstein

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Thanks, guys. Two questions, if I may. One, on macro, it sure doesn’t sounded from the numbers in your commentary but I’ve got to ask. Last -- the other day we had F5 in Juniper with 2 very different messages. In F5s case, there was about cancellations, delays, downsizing increased budget scrutiny, especially overseas, in particular overseas. Are you not seeing any of that, especially in light of FX and energy prices in Europe, etcetera?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Paul, it's something that we -- obviously, is something that we keep a very close eye on. And we're not seeing it. We have a lot of different variables that we look at, specifically as we look forward, we look at opportunities that we have in the funnel that are -- and we're scrubbing those regularly. We have feedback from our direct sellers in field and what they're rolling up and calling. And as you're aware, we have an AI tool that sits on top of Salesforce that comes up with a call. So we kind of have kind of 3 legs to our outlook and we're just not seeing it. There's 2 things that are in play here. One is the resiliency of networking. One way to offset inflation is productivity and -- and what's driving productivity are improvements in technology and all the digital transformation projects that you see today, the glue to everything is the network. And so we're not seeing networking initiatives being deprioritized. And in our backlog, the fact that we have a backlog of complicated networking systems, not commodity products, we're not seeing -- we're not seeing the books. And so that's why we say it's a fraction of 1% because it truly is. So if enterprise customers are having to cut back spend, we're not seeing them prioritize networking. We're seeing other items in the budget being cut in front of networking. So that's one thing. The other thing is our relative size and we mentioned that we're taking share. The fact of the matter is we are taking share against much larger players. So these small share gains for us can cloud what may be happening in the larger market. So the -- our ability to continue to drive bookings even in these challenged markets like in the EMEA market or currency challenged markets in APAC, we still see healthy growth in bookings and some of that is going to be from market share gains. And the other is, as I mentioned, is just the resiliency of these networking projects which in our mind to become more strategic for enterprise customers.

Paul Silverstein

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

And I just thought you just pushed through, you’re not even seeing elongated sales cycles.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

No, we're not. I would say it's actually the opposite, Paul, we're seeing. If anything and this goes back to supply chain, if anything, we may see people that are anticipating lead times and ordering early so that they can establish their position as it relates to supply chain. So we're not seeing it. And in our case, we're asking the questions. We're all over it. Obviously, given everything that's going on in the world and the news, there's this expectation. So we're very sensitive to it. What I would say is we're just -- we're not seeing it.

Paul Silverstein

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

That pegs the question. Do you -- I assume the answer is no but has there been any communication view or anything that would argue that the supply chain constraints are keeping customers in line and that may be why you and others haven’t seen any weakness yet relative to macro. Again, I assume for when…

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Paul, I think it's fair that, that could be a factor. So in the case of Extreme, there's the overall significance of networking initiatives for our enterprise customers which underlie all of their digital transformation and productivity and sort of -- it's all about how they're driving their business and so we're just -- we're not seeing that get deprioritized. I think there is a supply chain element that you mentioned. There's also an element. Our story hangs together with our fabric and with our cloud, with our end-to-end enterprise solution and the recognition that Extreme is getting in the marketplace today. We are getting -- we're seeing more opportunities. And I think some of our larger competitors are creating these opportunities because of a disjointed vision of how to leverage cloud, how to have this single pane of glass, a single view of all your network elements end-to-end across the enterprise, the orchestration of services from one cloud, future proof in your investment and with the latest technology, we have the cleanest story out in the marketplace today when you combine that with our fabric technology. And it's resonating. And so we're taking share and we do have a different story and we're getting more looks. And I think some of that is -- we're the beneficiary of some of the issues out in the market with some of our larger competitors.

Paul Silverstein

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

One last question on this. Ed, correct me if I’m wrong. Historically, when there were downturns, especially significant downturns, the typical customer behavior in that environment had been to stay with the incumbent and not to switch vendors. It was only in better environments when they were more willing by away from whoever their increment was HP, Cisco level. Do I have that right?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

I'm not sure -- I'm not sure I can validate that for you, Paul. I think in this environment what we're seeing is maybe the opposite. Their supply chain strategies in some of the larger players have pursued that are creating opportunities, as I mentioned, for us, especially our enterprise customers. And then there's a lack of a cohesive solution for customers where it's very expensive for them. So it's almost more expensive for them to stay with some of the legacy larger vendors in a sense more risky because of the lack of a cohesive end-to-end strategy, especially as it relates to cloud. And that's something that's creating more opportunities for us rather than less. And that may be different than maybe what you saw in the traditional recessionary type or a downturn scenario in the market.

Operator

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Mike Genovese with Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Mike Genovese

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. So, guys, really good report. I mean, I don’t see anything not great here except for, I guess, the gross margins your building up sequentially, the gross margin was in the quarter and the guide were just very slightly less than what we were looking for. And I guess my question is, is that more a function of the supply chain and expedite fees? Or is that more of a function of the mix shift to wireless? And where do we think that’s going to look like in future quarters, particularly in the back half of the year? Do we expect a mix shift away from wireless? Or will that ground for a while?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

I would say that the latter because the amount of expedite fees and the freight costs that we paid in the quarter were in line with our expectations. The shift to wireless was more pronounced than we expected entering the quarter. And that's really what drive the difference between the 57.6 [ph] that we reported and the 58 [ph] that we were getting for at the start of the quarter.

Mike Genovese

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

And do we think the mix will change? Or this is a -- I think that happened last quarter too. So is this kind of the two quarter… Rémi Thomas: The loosening of supply chain combined with the historical very high level of backlog for wireless products means that, that the 30%-70%, 30% wireless 70% wired is going to stay for the next few quarters. However, the reason we mentioned in our introductory comments that we feel confident we can cross the 60% gross margin mark is that we now have visibility as to the reduction of expedite fees and freight costs. So although that mix is not going to change, we do see progressive reduction in expedite fees and freight costs that will drive a higher gross margin, especially in the second half when we expected higher volumes of shipments that lead to a better absorption of the fixed costs that are in our cost of goods sold.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Rémi, I can add one other variable here which is if you recall a year ago, we did not have these direct relationships with secondary and tertiary component vendors. And today we do, we meet regularly and we have confidence in what they're delivering because they are delivering on what they say they're going to deliver. And they've given us the commitment of the ramp. When we don't have the direct commitment and we're not getting the shipments, we also have to go out in the secondary markets to find product. And so that also leads to increased prices when we're having to go out and buy components in the secondary market. So as we have and we see the commit from the secondary and tertiary component vendors step up, this is what's giving us the confidence in the forecast. At the same time, it will reduce our reliance on secondary markets where we're paying up, also the expedite fees that Rémi is talking about as well as the freight components.

Mike Genovese

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Okay. Great. Perfect. I guess, back on the macro, you guys gave a very direct, I thought clear answer on particularly around Europe, you are not seeing macro weakness. You did mention in the prepared remarks though, about some, I guess, currency-related weakness in Asia Pacific. So I guess, is that the macro effect that you’re seeing? And what do you think the -- I mean, the solution to that is. Is this customers’ willingness to pay? Or expectations of the currency will change? Or is there any thought of repricing any of the backlog if it gets worse? Just your thoughts on those issues, please.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Yes. I would say, Mike, I would say it's less of an issue with backlog. It's more of an issue with new bookings and a timing issue on these important projects. I mean, I'll reiterate that networking projects are underpinning the really important initiatives. And there's not really another alternative for them other than a timing decision. And in that market, I will say we have upgraded our team significantly. We are excited about the team and new channel relationships that we have, more than any other market in the world we have smallest markets there in that market. So the opportunity to take share, small little share bites in that market can help us offset the reticence of certain buyers, particularly in Japan, for example, where they've seen a currency devaluation of 40%. So that's -- at the high level. Rémi, I don't know if you want to add anything to that. Rémi Thomas: No, I just want to say that for deals that we deem to be strategic if the customer is struggling basically to meet their budget, given the currency devaluation, it's a question for us of do we want to leave that deal or go ahead and grab it. And so in certain specific deals that are strategic to us, we're willing to be slightly more aggressive to meet the customers' budget requirements and take the deal up the street.

Mike Genovese

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Okay. Fantastic. Last question. I know I’m going to ask the same, I guess, numbers everybody asked. But fiscal ‘24, I guess, where we’re still looking, I just want to confirm, first of all, that we’re still looking for acceleration in the 13% to 17% revenue growth. But I guess we would expect the book-to-bill to be below 1 that year because we releasing so much backlog but I don’t know if you can see this far out. But kind of sequentially year-over-year, ‘24 orders versus ‘23 orders, do you think that they could be flat to up? Or do you think that they’ll be down? If you can have any view this early on that?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Well, Mike, I'll jump out first here. As I was mentioning before, we have a very strong focus on our funnel and we look bottoms-up at each of the opportunities. We do it by geo. We do it by our regional directors and the regional directors are in the details down to the account executive level. We also have a separate partner forecast as part of our quarterly business reviews with our partners. So all this comes together and all this feeds the opportunities that we see for the next 12 months. That's really the way that we look at it. And we're seeing very healthy demand, organic bookings demand for the next 12 months year-over-year based on what we see in our funnel. So we see this continuing. We don't see [indiscernible] it pulling back currently. So as we contemplate rolling into our fiscal '24, you would expect -- we are expecting to see continued growth in demand and bookings and then the releveling of book-to-bill. Keep in mind, we're not showing all of our revenue because we're still building backlog this year. So we're going to have the benefit of just the releveling of book-to-bill to the current demand levels and then the release of backlog which today is 3 quarters worth of backlog but we think that will grow. And so that's what you're going to see going into fiscal '21. That's our best guess today. And so our expectation would be that we would see a book-to-bill drop below 1 but that's going to be a significant driver of revenue growth. Rémi Thomas: And our current working assumption, Mike, is that top line will grow between 15% and 17% next year.

Mike Genovese

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Great. Well, congratulations on the results and the momentum and keep up the great work.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst · Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Dave Kang with B. Riley. Your line is open.

Dave Kang

Analyst · B. Riley. Your line is open.

Hi, yes. Thank you. Good morning. Just wanted to -- can you repeat, Rémi, the backlog mix between wired versus wireless? Rémi Thomas: We have not split the backlog between wired and wireless, Dave. The comment I made, the 30%-70% was for revenue this quarter. And just to give you an idea, a year ago it was 21%-79%. So on a year-over-year basis, there's been a dramatic shift in the wired to wireless revenue ratio. But we're not communicating the split. I did mention that there's a significant amount of backlog for wireless but I didn't give a percentage.

Dave Kang

Analyst · B. Riley. Your line is open.

Got it. And then in your presentation I noticed that regarding the verticals, there are no plus and minus signs. Can you kind of go over those key verticals, what you’re seeing and whether it’s a plus or somewhat turning equal or negative? Rémi Thomas: Yes, we haven't seen -- and that's why I made the comments that I made about the split as a percentage of total bookings is we haven't seen any dramatic shift. So in other words, the large, the top 4 segments which are government, education, health care, manufacturing, retail, transportation, logistics still account for roughly the same percentage point. We did see a sequential improvement in our bookings in sports and entertainment and that really came off of the fact that we had a low quarter in Q4, so that we saw a significant recovery in there. But we're not seeing any major trend. The funding in education and government remains very healthy. Healthcare business remains pretty healthy. Manufacturing, where you'd see -- you would expect to see signs of a slowdown because of the macro environment has actually behaved quite well. The year-over-year increase in bookings in manufacturing was double digits. And then retail, transportation, logistics which also could be sensitive to change in the macro environment is also enjoying healthy trends.

Dave Kang

Analyst · B. Riley. Your line is open.

Got it. And then I may have missed this but then did you talk about the supply chain impact on your margins? I think last quarter it was about 600 bps. What was it this quarter? Rémi Thomas: So the comment I made about 600 bps is I was comparing the purchase price variance that we pay which really are expedite fees and us going out to the secondary market, as Ed mentioned. And I was adding that with the freight costs and comparing it to fiscal '21. We're not really breaking it down by quarter but just to give you an indication, purchase price variance which really reflect those expedite fees, have reached an elevated amount of about $15 million per quarter. They're back to $11 million. So there's a $4 million improvement there. As far as freight costs are concerned, they just roughly are expected to improve by $1 million in Q2 versus Q1. So if you think of the improvement that we're seeing today, it's about $5 million overall versus the peak that we reached at one point in time. And then you can divide that $5 million by the revenue this quarter of $297.7 million to get a feel for the improvement that we're seeing in gross margin as a percentage of revenue.

Dave Kang

Analyst · B. Riley. Your line is open.

Got it. And my last question is on seasonality. I mean, typically I think in the past, fiscal first quarter is seasonally weak versus second quarter and yet you grew about 7% sequentially in the first quarter and you’re only guiding to about 2% sequential growth in second quarter. Just wondering how much of that is conservatism versus is there something else that we are missing? Rémi Thomas: And that's purely driven by supply chain. We get a weekly reads from my supply chain teams as to what they're able to ship this quarter. The services and subscription revenue, as you can imagine, is largely coming off the balance sheet from deferred revenue that's sitting there and that 2% sequential growth that we're guiding for is based on these 2 factors. And we don't feel like we've been particularly conservative. We try to be as accurate as possible.

Dave Kang

Analyst · B. Riley. Your line is open.

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Christian Schwab with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Christian Schwab

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Hey, congrats on the great results. So Rémi, as we think about backlog, when is that going to normalize? Or I know there are certain components and we know there’s thousands of different ones in the switch. So that’s because one area of silicon might be opening up, others still are not. Are we going to run with a bigger backlog business war much more -- what do you -- I guess what I’m really asking is, when is backlog going to normalize? When does it go back to historical levels? Or do you believe until we have full access to -- or oversupply of semiconductor components that, that is not likely. Rémi Thomas: Christian, I'll let Ed chime in as well because we're both very close to the topic but we believe it's going to be fiscal '26 when it really goes back to normal. And we'd expect our backlog to be anywhere between $50 million to $100 million at that point in time. But based on what we see in the semiconductor industry with obviously new capacity being added but at the same time, some of the large semiconductor makers revising their plans, we will also see demand dropping in other industry segments that are heavy consumers of chipsets and competed with us and now see slower demand. The combination of these 2 factors tell us that it's going to be a while before things fully go back to normal. So based on our delivery plans, we think it's really -- it takes 2 fiscal year -- I mean, fiscal '23, what's left is it fiscal '24, fiscal '25. And then maybe at the start of fiscal '26, we drop back to below $100 million. That's our current scenario.

Christian Schwab

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Fantastic. No other questions. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question is the follow-up from Alex Henderson with Needham. Your line is open.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

Great. Thanks. So in looking at the mix assumptions through to the fourth quarter and thinking about your gross margins, can you talk a little bit about the impact on gross margins of; one, the fall of expedite fees and costs associated with the procurement. Two, the mix to Universal and the impact that, that has versus your historical products, where I think the margins are quite a bit better. And then third, what kind of improvements you’re getting off of the redesign process? How do we allocate between those various factors, the improvement in margins? Rémi Thomas: I'm not sure I want to get into that level of detail. But I'd say the combination are the factors that you mentioned, Alex, should be driving an improvement in gross margin sequentially for products of about 1 to 1.5 percentage points in Q2 versus Q1 and then Q3 versus Q2. Again, these 3 factors combined together would drive an improvement of about 2 percentage points. And then Q4 versus Q1, we're looking at roughly 1 percentage point. One factor that you have not mentioned which we're also looking at because it did impact our gross margin in the quarter with the mix of professional services versus subscription and classic services -- by classic service, I mean, maintenance in Q1 that drove our services gross margin down to 67.5% versus 70.7% in Q4 fiscal '22. We do expect the services and subscription gross margin to go back to 68.5% by Q4 because we will not see the same way of professional services. And those were essentially related to MLB deployment.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

So that actually was the second question I wanted to ask. So I’m looking at the revenue growth rate guidance for FY ‘23. Can you -- clearly, as you’re working some of these larger product sales that does drive adoption of services and subscriptions. So can you break out a little bit between the implied growth in the product line versus the services line in that guidance assumption? Rémi Thomas: Yes. So we would expect -- as you saw, both grew and I'm combining services and subscribe into one bucket but both grew at around 11%. I would expect that in Q2 we'll see a higher growth for products will be closer to 10% than services and subscription which will be in the mid- to high single digits. And then in Q3, we actually expect based on our current delivery plans, the growth in services to be higher -- services and subscription to be higher than product. And then Q4 is when we really see a step function improvement in supply chain. And then you're going to see a very strong growth in product, whereas our services and subscription growth will be close to 10%.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

That’s very helpful. And then so I guess in -- as we move out into ‘24, the product would continue to be much higher based off of the fact that you’re getting meaningful improvement in supply availability. Is that the right logic? Rémi Thomas: That's correct. And then services and subscription continues to grow at a steady rate of anywhere between 8% and 10% depending on the quarters.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

What are you factoring in, in terms of Broadcom price increases I’ve heard that they’re going to increase pricing in the January time frame. Does that show up in that quarter? Or does that show up with some delay? How do we think about their price increases? Rémi Thomas: We're basically today placing orders with Broadcom a year in advance in order for us to secure the current pricing.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

Okay. So you would be protected for a considerable amount of time then because of that procurement -- advanced procurement. Yes. Okay. That’s really interesting. I wouldn’t have expected that. The other question… Rémi Thomas: The other thing to mention is that in addition to list price and price increases, there are expedite fees. And one of the things that we see happen with Broadcom and some of this has to do with our relationship with them. Some of the price increases will be mitigated by a reduction in expedite fees.

Alex Henderson

Analyst

Right, right. The other question I had is on the decommits comments you made, it sounded like decommits are declining but still happening. Is that accurate? Or have the decommits basically stopped at this point? Rémi Thomas: Alex, decommits are just -- it would be a normal part of the business. These are one-offs. And I can tell you right now because of our scrutiny around this, each and every decommit, to the extent there is one, gets a lot of scrutiny from us. And there's no consistency around it. So the example I might give would be a government agency that has budget. They can't get supply by the end of the year, it's use it or lose it. So they want to reprioritize another spend. So they might cancel an order or and maybe that comes into the budget for the following year based on that dynamic. But these are things that are not really supply chain. I guess you could say that supply chain related but these are more one-offs. And so we're not really seeing a change in the one-offs and they remain at a fraction of 1%.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Alex, was your question on decommits related to customers or suppliers?

Operator

Operator

His line -- actually left the queue.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Okay.

Operator

Operator

So we're going to move on to our last question as a follow-up from, one moment. So a follow-up question from Paul Silverstein with Cowen. Your line is open.

Paul Silverstein

Analyst

And Rémi, I apologize if I missed it but can you give us an update on the Arsen [ph] relationship and what you’re seeing with respect to future revenue outlook and current revenue contribution from that product? Rémi Thomas: I will actually let Ed comment on that.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Paul, we have an excellent relationship with them. We just met with senior leadership in Stockholm. I -- we are in a very good position with that account. And in addition to C&IS which is really a function of 5G rollouts from carriers and each of the carriers is kind of at their own stage of life cycle. So we're seeing we're seeing a couple of the larger carriers move from proof of concept into deployment modes. So that's -- we're excited because we're the sole source vendor for that application which we expect to roll out over the next 5-plus years. The -- we are looking at other opportunities with Ericsson that I would say are longer term in nature. But we have new growth opportunities within that account.

Paul Silverstein

Analyst

Ed, on the 5G products in general, because I believe you’ve referenced another relationship previously won directly with a specific carrier. What’s the current revenue run rate from that and what’s the potential going forward?

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

I don't know what we've disclosed. Rémi, I'm going to rely on you for what we've disclosed or communicated around service provider. And we have 2 very significant relationships, Paul, that you're referencing. And then we have other service provider customers that I would say are less strategic but nonetheless fall into that service provider bucket. We see -- in terms of the other -- the direct service provider customer account, we see a significant opportunity, not just with sell-to and supporting what I would call their 4G and 5G back office as well as the carpeted enterprise and sell to. We also partner with them in stadium deployments and we sell with them. But now we've just been approved for their enterprise teams to sell Extreme, retire quota, get paid commission and we have sellers on our side that are actively working with their sellers which is a new growth vector with that account. So from the SP side, we see new opportunities with the Swedish company as well as new growth opportunities inside the large carrier in the U.S. Rémi Thomas: Ed, we haven't really communicated but we did mention that both of them were several tens of million dollars in annual bookings. And I can say that the combination of these 2 is between 50 and $100 million in annual bookings.

Paul Silverstein

Analyst

Okay. Thanks, guys.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Thank, Paul.

Operator

Operator

And I'd like to turn the call back over to Ed for any closing remarks.

Ed Meyercord

Analyst

Yes. Well, thank you. Great questions. We appreciate participation in the call and the engagement with the analysts and people who are participating on the call. It was obviously a strong quarter for us at Extreme. We’re -- it’s been a cross-functional effort across the board and really proud of the caliber of execution of all of our teams at Extreme across the board as well as the partnership we have with our channel community. We’ve got a lot of momentum. As we’ve said, we’re taking share. And it’s really a function today of us releasing supply chain and we’ve got better visibility to that as we step through the year. So I’d say we have more and more confidence in our outlook as we go forward. So as we say this, there’s never been a better time to be at Extreme and that’s true for our employees, partners, customers and I think it’s also true for investors. We encourage everybody that we have upcoming investor conferences. We encourage people to participate. I know with Needham, Raymond James, Oppenheimer and Cowen. So, we look forward to being with you live and have any opportunity to share the story in more detail. Thanks, everybody and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.