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NetScout Systems, Inc. (NTCT)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 26, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to NetScout’s Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2012 Operating Results Conference Call. [Operator instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. With us today is NetScout’s President and CEO, Mr. Anil Singhal. He is accompanied by NetScout’s Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Jean Bua; NetScout’s Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Michael Szabados; and Mr. David Sommers, NetScout’s Executive Vice Chairman. At this time, I will turn the call over to Ms. Cathy Taylor, NetScout’s Director of Investor Relations to provide the opening remarks. Ms. Taylor, please proceed.

Catherine Taylor

Analyst

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to NetScout’s fiscal 2012 fourth quarter conference call for the period ended March 31. Before we begin, let me remind you that during the course of this conference call, we will be providing you with the discussion of the factors that we currently anticipate may influence our results going forward. These statements include forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and other federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements may involve judgment and individual judgments may vary. Forward-looking statements include expressed or implied statements regarding future economic and market conditions, guidance for fiscal 2013, acquisition integration success and new product releases. It should be clearly understood that the projections on which we base our guidance and other forward-looking statements and our perception of the factors influencing those projections are highly likely to change over time. Although, those projections and the factors influencing them will likely change, we will not necessarily inform you when they do. Our company policy is to provide guidance only at certain points in the year such as during the quarterly earnings call. We do not plan to update that guidance otherwise. Actual results may differ materially from what we say today and no one should assume later in the quarter that the comments we make today are still valid. For the further discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ, see the specific risks and uncertainties discussed in NetScout’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year-ended March 31, 2011, on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our quarterly financial results are included with our earnings press release. We report our results on a GAAP basis, as well as on a…

Anil Singhal

Analyst

Thank you, Cathy. We are pleased to have completed our fiscal year with a strong quarter. We posted record quarterly non-GAAP revenue of $89.6 million, an increase of 7% sequentially and 16% year-over-year. Non-GAAP earnings per share were up 11% sequentially and 30% over last year. Our full year results have passed the $300 million mark, which was an important milestone for NetScout. Fiscal year 2012 non-GAAP revenue were $309 million, up 7% over the prior year. Non-GAAP earnings per share was $1.10, up 6% over last year. Revenue for the year came in at the high-end of the narrow guidance we issued in January, which was $305 to $310 -- $305 million to $310 million. Fiscal year 2012 GAAP and non-GAAP net income per diluted share were within the narrowed guidance ranges. For the year, total bookings were up 17% over last year. These increases were driven by total bookings from our service providers which were particularly strong with an increase of 31% over last year. As we had expected growth accelerated in fiscal 2012 from wireless carriers expanding their 3G and 4G LTE rollout and from our growing base of competitive wins globally. Total bookings for our broader enterprise sector were 13% over last year and in the enterprise vertical financial services -- enterprise verticals, financial services which was volatile across the year our total bookings were up 15%. The government sector finished the year with an 8% increase in total bookings despite a very slow start. Service renewals which are included in total booking were up 30% year-over-year and drove deferred revenue up 12%. The strength of our service renewal business is due to the increasing value that our service delivery solution brings to our customers. Our fourth quarter bookings were particularly strong. Total bookings were up…

Michael Szabados

Analyst

Thank you, Anil. I would like to share a high level summary of our Q4 and fiscal year 2012 accomplishments, and provide some insight into our path forward for fiscal 2013. We are very pleased with our growth trajectory both in the Enterprise and Service Provider parts of our business. Our strong Service Provider bookings were visible on multiple fronts. In both Tier 1 and Tier 2 wireless communications companies there are continued investment in LTE service assurance has yielded success a number of wireless service providers globally have certified NetScout service assurance solution as LTE ready, and as a result, we are seeing an uptick in orders for 3G products and technologies also. In other words being 4G ready gets NetScout significant 3G business as well, and 3G is where a big portion of the traffic growth and CapEx spend will be in the coming year. We are also wining deals based on the significantly improved scalability of ESI technology, which is designed for network speeds reaching 100 gigabits per second giving us a significant competitive advantage. This allowed us to win significant new business from an established Tier I carrier in Europe for current 3G operations and the potential for future LTE business. We also made major enhancement to our Service Delivery Manager or SDM product prompting our service provider customers to expand their SDM deployments moving beyond post event session phase subscriber by subscriber measurements to real-time top/down user experience by region, by mobile device type and service. For example, a Tier 1 carrier has recently expanded their use of our solution to help identify and mitigate issues they have been having with their new LTE rollout with a competitive -- which a competitive solution could not resolve quickly enough. In addition to wireless carriers, cable companies…

Jean A. Bua

Analyst

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. As Cathy said earlier, we have a slide presentation to accompany this section of the call. You may feel free to follow along with the slides as I speak. However, I will discuss our results without needing to reference the slides. We will be starting with the third slide which shows our fourth quarter income statement. As Anil outlined, our business produced solid results for the fourth quarter of FY 2012. Our non-GAAP revenue grew 16%, while our non-GAAP earnings per share grew 30%. Our fourth quarter non-GAAP total revenue was $89.6 million, which is an increase of 16% from the same quarter in fiscal year ‘11. With a non-GAAP total revenue non-GAAP product revenue was $54.5 million, which is an increase of 21% over the same quarter in fiscal year ‘11. Service revenue was $35.1 million on a non-GAAP basis, which is an 8% increase from the same quarter in the prior year. The GAAP total revenue for the same period was $89.5 million, which is an increase of 15% from the same quarter in fiscal year ‘11. Within GAAP total revenue GAAP product revenue was $54.5 million, which is an increase of 19% over the same quarter prior year. Service revenue was $35 million on a GAAP basis, which is an 8% increase from the same quarter in the prior year. On a non-GAAP basis, our earnings per share for the fourth quarter were $0.39. This is a $0.09 higher than the fourth quarter of fiscal year ‘11 and represents a 30% increase. On a GAAP basis, our earnings per share were $0.30. This is $0.05 higher than the fourth quarter of fiscal year ‘11 and represents a 20% increase. Turning to slide four, the business maintained strong gross profit margins…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Chad Bennett with Craig-Hallum Capital. Your line is open.

Chad Bennett

Analyst

Just a few questions from me. I think the biggest surprise relative to what I was thinking is probably the financial services results in the quarter from a bookings standpoint. Can you give us a sense for what you saw there during the quarter in terms of a pickup and may be a little bit insight as to how sustainable you think that is and if there was anything that was abnormal in that specific segment in the quarter that helped it?

Anil Singhal

Analyst

Well, I’ll just say a couple of things and maybe David can add to this more details. We don’t see a trend right now to really see what may happen and moving forward, I think this was some good deals we got this quarter. But it will take some time for us to see a pattern of that financial service is fully coming back for the quarter -- coming year. So I think it’s affected by couple of big deals and hopefully, this is not an anomaly and we’ll continue to see good business especially with some new products we are coming out for that space.

David Sommers

Analyst

Let me just add that we did -- we saw a strong business particularly from one very large customer, who has been strong for us all year. And as Anil suggests some of the rest of the financial services industry has not been so strong. We think, however, that at some in fiscal year the rest of the financial services business for us will start to pick up as our customers start to compete with each other based on their infrastructure as this one large customer for us has been implementing new initiatives with their infrastructure including our solutions. So we are upbeat on the ultimate upturn of financial services as is included in our guidance.

Chad Bennett

Analyst

Right. And then as much as you can give us guidance on for the year guidance, revenue guidance that you gave, how should we think about the growth rates on the service provider side and then on just lumping all the enterprise business together, how should we think about those two segments growing as much as you can say?

David Sommers

Analyst

Well, we have a very optimistic view of our service provider business as we’ve tried to indicate to you. And the growth in the service provider bookings that Jean talked about for this year we think are indicative of the future and perhaps better for the service provider business. We are in early days of penetrating wireless carriers globally and for some carriers in the major markets that we’ve been taking business from in North America and Europe even some of the major carriers there we’re still in early days. We are having success in gaining share. So you can look at our current bookings growth in FY ‘12 and think about that going forward or better. We think that in the enterprise including financials that the kind of growth that we saw this year is likely to continue and that is the belief that supports our guidance. We see as financials comeback as Anil suggested when he talked about, that may provide some acceleration to that business. But we think the enterprise business coming and following the pickup in the economy and the pickup in their businesses, the top-line growth of their businesses that we see in the future will continue to be stronger in the future than it has been over the past several years for us. Chad, is that helpful?

Chad Bennett

Analyst

Yes. Absolutely. And then one last one from me may be for Jean, the service bookings renewals in the quarter up 54% year-over-year seems like a really big number to me. Was there anything, is that just seasonality, was there anything abnormal, was there a catch up kind of renewals in there or someone renewed earlier or anything like that abnormal in that number?

Jean A. Bua

Analyst

I would tell you it’s probably three things. One, if you recollect on the FY ‘11, service renewal bookings were depressed from multiyear for go forward into FY ‘10. So the comparable is probably a little easier to achieve. Yes, you are correct about seasonality. The last few quarters of the year generally are higher in renewal bookings. And we have been working with some of our larger installed base and creating large multiyear contracts that one of them came through in this quarter.

Chad Bennett

Analyst

Is there any way to quantify that?

Jean A. Bua

Analyst

I don’t think we divulge that level of analysis.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Robison with Wunderlich. Your line is open.

Matthew Robison

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

Can you talk a little bit about this expense pattern that you’ve identified for the first quarter and it sounds a little bit structural that you going to front load it? That will be my first question.

Jean A. Bua

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

Sure. I think I don’t know that we would describe it as front loaded as much as one of the effects in the first quarter is that the two acquisitions that we made Simena and Replay came in late in Q3. So the run rate on Q1 over Q1 is higher. And then as you remember last year, we put in -- we decided that we were going to, for efficiency reasons and other reasons combine our user forum with our sales meeting. So we did not have the user forum last year. We are having that actually next week. So the expenses associated with that user forum is happening in this quarter, where we can have any -- in prior fiscal year. That’s mostly the genesis of the expense shift.

Matthew Robison

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

Okay. And you mentioned cable companies, that was interesting. Why are cable companies stepping up now and what’s the catalyst for that change?

Michael Szabados

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

Well, cable companies have the same need to implement in their IP service assurance projects. And so we have been participating in voice and other and also video projects for the cable companies and Wi-Fi hotspot providing service and that sort of thing. So the cable companies are coming up the IP growth very fast also and they have constituted. They are relatively small but fast growing component of our non-Tier 1 service provider business.

Matthew Robison

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

So you’ve started to see this Wi-Fi proxy for 4G materialize in demand of cable companies a little bit?

Michael Szabados

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

I guess that’s part of it.

Anil Singhal

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

I think overall as Michael Szabados saying that I mean we are the IP expert from the enterprise and probably the only company who had IP expertise for the cable and telcos prior to this whole trend moving in. And so I think we are just benefiting from the trend, we are in the right place at the right time and as the transition is going to IP in various segments whether wireless or radio access network, which is going to be upcoming, LTE or cable provider. I think we have benefited from the trend because it’s roughly the similar set of problems we need to address for them and they have similar challenges.

Matthew Robison

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

Jean, you mentioned DSO in year-over-year comparison, but your cash flow was pretty strong given that there was a big increase in DSO from sequential standpoint. Can you talk a little bit about linearity and what we should expect in the first quarter and also, I didn’t catch it if you gave it so could you give me the head count, it will be nice?

Jean A. Bua

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

So regarding our DSO, it is just generally -- we maintain our collection activity and we still have very high quality portfolio of receivables. The DSOs skew from the prior quarter is more related to the timing of renewal bookings and when they come in and as we’ve mentioned we had a few larger ones at the end of this quarter. So that’s why the DSO went up. And what was your head count question?

Matthew Robison

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

Well, I didn’t catch it if you said it, could you repeat it?

Jean A. Bua

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

What the number of head count for the end of the year?

Matthew Robison

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

Yes.

Jean A. Bua

Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is open.

About a little less than 900, about 890 employees.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Kurtz with Sterne, Agee.

Alex Kurtz

Analyst · Sterne, Agee.

Dave, my head almost rolled off the shoulder -- my shoulders with the quarterly guidance, but I’ll discuss that later I guess, when I look at...

David Sommers

Analyst · Sterne, Agee.

Unexpected...

Alex Kurtz

Analyst · Sterne, Agee.

…strength in the local bookings and then, cautioned with the little bit of Q1 outlook here, and then obviously there were -- from my calculations there was a deceleration in Europe in the quarter. Can you just give a little bit more color and then, then on top of it government, can you just give us a little bit more push and pull on the near-term demand functions across all the key verticals? So it sounds like something there is sort of a miss in government. It seems like there was a deceleration in Europe. But then obviously, mobile had very strong quarter. So, just a little bit more content, that would be great.

Jean A. Bua

Analyst · Sterne, Agee.

So, the demand in our verticals, the deceleration in Europe. I would -- we would -- we have -- what we have noticed in Europe is that we still have good demand in service provider, which is as you’ve noted in the vertical for service provider has been very strong, which is just the execution against our strategy for LTE and 3G. The deceleration in Europe is mostly due to -- there is a large percentage of banking industry over there and with the Eurozone economically the way they are right now, we’re not seeing a lot of activity within those financial industries. That is at the heart of the deceleration in the European market.

Alex Kurtz

Analyst · Sterne, Agee.

And then just a little more clarity on government and, is this, sort of, just a pause ahead of typical September budget flush or is there something more systemic that you guys are starting to see out of government?

Jean A. Bua

Analyst · Sterne, Agee.

No. I think -- I think with our long-term relationships in the project with the government is still doing, we don’t see any kind of a pause in our relationship with the government. You know we have spoken in the past about their buying processes and just general wariness with when they actually execute but other than that we don’t see any trends that would be significant.

Alex Kurtz

Analyst · Sterne, Agee.

Just last question from me, how should we think about services growth versus product growth for the year. Obviously, you had significant product growth year-over-year in March. And I’m just wondering how you guys sort to think about that. Would you expect product to outgrow services, which I would imagine you’d say, but may be a little bit more color on those two growth rates for the year versus what you gave for guidance?

Anil Singhal

Analyst · Sterne, Agee.

Yes. Let me give Alex, just a high level of view and then David will provide more detail. So as Jean mentioned that I think that some of the growth is as a result of advanced bookings in fiscal year ‘10. So the number in fiscal year ‘11 was sort of artificially low. But overall, I think we don’t see a big growth there, but we don’t see some of the challenge we had with -- previously because of some refresh and some of the things going on with our earlier products acquired from Network General. So while we don’t see this growing anywhere close to the, I mean, the rate at which we have seen, but -- more -- lot of the growth is going to really come from the product side as we mentioned. But we -- some of the negative effects of renewal growth in the past are sort of behind us.

David Sommers

Analyst · Sterne, Agee.

So just referring -- again what Anil was, of course, referring to was the big bubble of multiyear renewals that we had that we talked about a couple of year ago the depressed FY ‘11 and therefore made the -- growth in FY ‘12 look larger in that direction that is well. Alex, you anticipated that as we’ve historically said the product revenue growth will precede service revenue growth and that we expect that to be the case in FY ‘13. Anil mentioned in his prepared remarks that against a total revenue outlook of 10% to 15% growth, we expect product to be in the 15% to 20% range or perhaps Jean mentioned that sorry. And that’s indicative of that spread right. So product revenue outgrow service revenue yielding a total revenue growth in the 10% to 15% range. So I switch... And by the way don’t expect to see quarterly guidance going forward.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from the line Aaron Schwartz with Jefferies.

Aaron Schwartz

Analyst · Jefferies.

You’ve talked a little bit about on the service provider side, I guess achieving certification as a number of different providers, it’s not something I really heard you guys take about before. Just -- can you just walk through so what that means? Does that sort of put you on a, sort of, standardized list or purchasing list where you could expect, maybe steady or purchase this quarter in or quarter out or maybe, just kind of walk through, what you were referring to that?

Anil Singhal

Analyst · Jefferies.

Yes. There is no real standardization. I think there are still multiple vendors we are supplying the products to Tier 1 providers. I think we are just getting used in more bits than before. So it’s not that we are the sole vendor and provider. It is just we are being invited into more situations with the Tier 1. We had business with Tier 1 customer last year also. But now we are in a better shape as is our product and other features that have improved and ASI technology is coming around.

Michael Szabados

Analyst · Jefferies.

Yes. Maybe, maybe a better term would be operationalize rather than certify. So we got deployed into operational networks in LTE in particular and that’s really the right way to characterize what I had said about the certifications. And that acceptance and deflect to deployment is what created our acceptances at the LTE IP leader and created subsequent and attached 3G opportunity as well.

Aaron Schwartz

Analyst · Jefferies.

And then just a quick question on the services revenue in the March quarter it was down, fairly size on a sequentially basis, was anything going on there, was that just the fact I think you alluded to some timing of renewals coming late in the quarter, I mean can you just walk through, did that have the impact on a sequential decline in services?

Jean A. Bua

Analyst · Jefferies.

No. The sequential decline is just a representation of the seasonality of the renewal patterns.

Aaron Schwartz

Analyst · Jefferies.

Okay. And then last question from me on the financial services customer that you’ve been working with. Can you just talk to the magnitude as the deal in the quarter, was it sort of 5 million or 10 million plus order deal, is there any way you can help us out with sort of the size of that transaction in the quarter?

Anil Singhal

Analyst · Jefferies.

I think we don’t talk about -- I mean don’t characterize beyond $1 million. Clearly, it was in the above $1 million deal and beyond that I think we have just decided not to report on that and so that’s where it is. It’s a $1 million deal, but how big it is we are not going to be disclosing.

David Sommers

Analyst · Jefferies.

It was significantly above the $1 million, but as Anil said we don’t disclose that. And it was not the only -- it was not only one major customer that’s why I highlighted. There were actually three financial customers in our top 10 deals for the quarter.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Cummins with ThinkEquity.

Daniel Cummins

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

A couple of things here. David, could you give us -- I’m sorry -- could you just go through your maintenance business or however you define your recurring revenue. The growth rate for just completed fiscal ‘12 and projection going forward, with regard to the sales and marketing spend, the quarterly profile is very, very flat, yet you obviously have a steep seasonality to your business. Can you just explain, why that is, why we shouldn’t expect some skew sort of tracking the revenue profile seasonally -- given that you do have a substantial direct model? And the organic growth rate please year-over-year for the company?

Anil Singhal

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

Well, I think there is a -- just let me answer the question on organic growth and then I think Jean can talk about on the renewal side. We have the organic growth is, I mean almost all of our stuff is organic growth, because yes, some of it is driven by acquisition but it’s not because of the big revenue stream coming directly from the acquisition. So we have a lot of drag effect because we sell, let say, when we have voice product, we can sell more application product or enterprise application product. So I consider the revenue from our acquired companies was very, very small compared to our total revenue. And so in that sense, everything which we are forecasting for next -- I would say almost everything is really organic growth. It won’t be there if our sales force and the delivery platform was not there.

Daniel Cummins

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

Okay. And how about the question on maintenance please and the sales and marketing?

David Sommers

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

Can you reiterate the service revenue question please?

Daniel Cummins

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

Sure. Just trying to get at your service line in a little more detail, specifically the maintenance space or the recurring revenue base, what was the growth rate for fiscal ‘12 and how you are feeling about it, looking ahead it feels like the business is accelerating to some degree?

David Sommers

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

So let me give you some insight into that. Of our services revenue line, the vast majority, 95% plus, is maintenance renewal contracts that are renewed annually. Our renewal rates they have been improving year-over-year and remain in the 80% range, which given the fact that most of our product is hardware based and hardware boxes have four or five year life, 80% renewal rate is excellent. So underneath renewals or maintenance service, the annual maintenance service, we have been seeing an acceleration caused in large part as Jean had mentioned by some of our large customers deciding that they really wanted to make multiyear commitments to renewals and of course, negotiate the price in the process. And that has led to the higher bookings that we talked about, but also to a little bit accelerated flow of revenue recognition because when you do multiyear bookings, there is -- there comes that time at the annual point when there might be a high risk of revenue recognition if the renewals are timely and of course, this will -- that multiyear eliminates that. So revenue flows better. You can see the growth in our bookings that we talked about I think and you can also see the growth in deferred revenue on the balance sheet that Jean mentioned that are assigned to the growth of our service business. But service business growth will always lag product revenue growth. With that, I get to what the question concerned.

Daniel Cummins

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

Yes. Well, I mean its feel it -- sorry?

Michael Szabados

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

I just wanted to add a point. Let me just explain it, that there has been a recent uptick in the service momentum primarily because the burden of the legacy hardware has finally been removed from our renewal base and also our growth is proportional to new sales rather than having this other factor, which dragged it down. So now I think we are going to stabilizing it.

David Sommers

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

So Michael was referring to some of the legacy hardware that we inherited long time ago with the Network General business, legacy product in general, which has depressed our renewal rates for several years as people drop off of those products at a faster rate. Because we would not -- that we were not enhancing them, the way we do with current product. So that depressed renewal rates and that’s part of the reason, major part of the reason why renewal rates in FY ‘12 were up, but did that get the essence of your question?

Daniel Cummins

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

Yes. I mean it’s -- it feels like the recurring business is growing easily 8% to 10%, I just want to be sure projecting forward that it just feels like it shouldn’t really be falling below 8%. I just want to be sure about that. And I think you’ve answered it, the -- yes and the sales and marketing please. Just it just seem so flat quarter-on-quarter, yeah, that’s really not your business is about seasonally?

David Sommers

Analyst · ThinkEquity.

Well, let me -- so our marketing business obviously has a significant -- our marketing expense has a significant program component and that does go up and down and you can see that in our -- and reflected in the sales and marketing line but it’s masked by the overwhelming element, which is headcount. And because of the way we manage our expenses as you would expect, we spread incentives in our accounting. We spread incentives over the year. So, that even though we will pay more for successful completion or exceeding quota at the end of the year, we accrue for that across the year. So you don’t see, so that’s to some extent disconnected with the seasonality of revenue in the way we account. So essentially, if we’re not growing headcount in sales and marketing than you won’t see -- you will see relatively flat or we’re growing it only modestly which has been our pattern. You will see relatively flat quarter-to-quarter expense in sales and marketing even though our revenue is a little more seasonal than that as you pointed out. I hope that helped you.

Operator

Operator

Your next comes from the line of Rohit Chopra with Wedbush.

Rohit Chopra

Analyst

Just wanted to ask you about Asia, I know it’s a small component of your business, but it was down 15%, just take a look at the quarter, is anything going on in Asia?

Anil Singhal

Analyst

I think that year-over-year I think again this one or two big deals can really make a difference there. But overall our business percentage is same for the last year as it was in the previous year. So the percentage of Asia-Pac business is not much difference from what we had in the previous years.

Michael Szabados

Analyst

Yes. I just wanted to add some color to it that in Asia the multinationals are definitely down, while our service provider business continues to be strong, so that, those are the dynamics.

Rohit Chopra

Analyst

Okay. Its more enterprise based and were there any 10% customers in the quarter, I know you calling, but I just want to make sure?

Jean A. Bua

Analyst

Yes. There was one.

Rohit Chopra

Analyst

Okay. And then last couple of things Michael, you didn’t mentioned any partnerships or anything like that contributing or helping in the previous year and even going forward? Can you just give us a sense of what’s happening?

Michael Szabados

Analyst

Yes. Our partnerships have been mostly on the marketing and sort of positioning front-end and have not materially contributed to our revenues can’t really -- really that has not been our primary driver in 2012. I think going forward, we are working on number of angles, but I cannot really predict how much they’re going to contribute directly, and I think that’s probably consistent between ‘12 and ‘13 so.

Rohit Chopra

Analyst

Okay. And then, lastly, I just wanted to ask about competition, there is there are people who are trying to be build more aggressive more on the enterprise side. And I just wanted to get a sense of what you are seeing in this competitive landscape on the enterprise side of the business?

Anil Singhal

Analyst

Well, I think like -- I think we always talked about the budget issues far out way compared to competition. I -- we -- I mean we don’t see anything on the horizon. There are small companies coming up as has been the case over the last five to 10 years and we really see that nobody has, can match the solution we have, especially as we are going to move forward, and our single appliance will be able to support voice, video, enterprise applications, as well as security. And so, I mean, there are players in each of these sub-segments, but nobody’s trying to creat this holistic picture and just the amount share -- amount of energy we have spent in this phase in the last 10 years. As you know the NetScout and Network General were the top two leaders for long time in the enterprise space and now we’re together. So, yes, the competition is there a little bit and it’s going to be, it will continue and in that sense it’s good for market awareness, but we don’t see any real issue with the competition.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Liu with B. Riley & Co.

Kevin Liu

Analyst · B. Riley & Co.

You talked a little bit about coming in the next quarter with some more product backlog and probably turning that for the foreseeable future here. The business doesn’t seem like it has changed all that much. You are getting more traction with service providers, but that’s been true for the past year. So just curious what’s changed and why you guys are now able to carry such significant levels of backlog in any give quarter?

Anil Singhal

Analyst · B. Riley & Co.

But I think the booking numbers are very high compared to last year. So it’s not, I mean, it looks -- it doesn’t look like, it looks single-digit growth on the revenue side. But on the booking side it is a huge number. We have almost more than $40 million, $50 million in booking. So that is what is allowing us to have a big backlog.

Michael Szabados

Analyst · B. Riley & Co.

And what changed, I mean, very importantly as we have a line of the USDM portfolio all the acquisitions we made this is going to drive more growth and has already started that’s in enterprise.

Kevin Liu

Analyst · B. Riley & Co.

And just on the acquired solutions and I know you guys have a difficult time breaking out those revenues. But maybe if you could speak qualitatively towards, I guess like Simena versus VoIP and video monitoring solutions, which functionality are your customers demanding more frequently, how has the product sales kind of corresponding with your expectations when you bought these companies?

Michael Szabados

Analyst · B. Riley & Co.

So the easiest edition to our product portfolio is the Simena switch because it doesn’t require any different selling and it involves the same decision makers and speed expansion of our product and there has been a pent-up demand for this component to be supplied by ourselves instead of having to be bought from somebody else. And voice is the second, it’s probably is a little slower to evolve, but it will be strong and especially the video component of the UC technology will give us growth. But Simena is definitely the most easy handing glove kind of fit into our selling model.

Kevin Liu

Analyst · B. Riley & Co.

And then just lastly from me, on the sales and marketing side, where did you guys end up on headcount for the year and what are kind of your hiring plans, specifically the sales in the coming year?

Jean A. Bua

Analyst · B. Riley & Co.

So ended the year around a little between around 300 to 325 people and we plan in fiscal year ‘13 to invest in marketing heads to continue with our USDM messaging and strategy. And we also plan on investing heads in sales within the emerging markets where we’ll be gaining traction in service provider and in the enterprise, and some of the other emerging markets as well as some of the Tier 2 then domestically.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I’ll turn the call back over to the presenters.

Anil Singhal

Analyst

Thanks everyone for your questions and comments, and support this last fiscal year. We will talk to you again in July -- late July. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.