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NetScout Systems, Inc. (NTCT)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, May 5, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by and welcome to NetScout's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2016 Results Conference Call. At this time, all parties are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer portion of the call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Andrew Kramer, Vice President of Investor Relations, and his colleagues at NetScout are on the line with us today. I would now like to turn the call over to Andrew Kramer to begin the company's prepared remarks. Please go ahead.

Andrew M. Kramer - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Keith, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to NetScout's fiscal year 2016 fourth quarter and year-end conference call for the period ended March 31, 2016. Joining me on this morning's call are Anil Singhal, NetScout's Co-Founder, President and CEO; Michael Szabados, NetScout's Chief Operating Officer; and Jean Bua, NetScout's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We've included a slide presentation that accompanies our prepared remarks. For those listeners who've dialed into the call this morning and would like to view the slide presentation, you can find it by going to our website at www.netscout.com/investors and then clicking on today's webcast. You can advance the slides in the webcast viewer to follow along with our commentary. We'll try to remember to call out the slide number we're referencing in our remarks. In terms of our agenda for today's call, Anil Singhal will share his perspective on our fourth quarter results and offer his perspective on our outlook for the upcoming year as it relates to the opportunities and challenges we believe lie ahead. Our COO, Michael Szabados, will offer some insights on our integration progress and recent wins that can help illustrate the opportunities that we're seeing in the marketplace. And Jean Bua, our CFO, will then provide greater detail and insight into our financial results and our guidance for fiscal year 2017. Moving on to slide number three. I'd like to remind everybody listening that forward-looking statements in this conference call are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended and to other federal securities laws. Investors are cautioned that the statements in this conference call, which are not strictly historical facts, including without limitation, the statements related to the financial guidance for NetScout, and all of…

Michael Szabados - Chief Operating Officer

Management

Thank you, Anil, and good morning, everyone. Slide number 11 provides an overview of the areas I plan to cover. First, I'd like to update you on the integration efforts. Next, I will highlight some key customer wins that illustrate our ability to capitalize on some of the major technology trends that Anil noted in his commentary. I will close by commenting on our go-to-market plans for the coming fiscal year. I'm pleased to report that we have met our key milestones for fiscal year 2016 on the integration front. Most importantly, we have successfully completed the work to wind down the operational transition services agreements with Danaher Corporation. From a systems perspective, we have brought all employees onto our corporate network and related IT system infrastructure and completely integrated the acquired portions of the Fluke Networks business into our enterprise systems environment. We have started fiscal year 2017 with our service provider and enterprise sales forces using a consistent CRM and sales compensation platform. From an HR perspective, we've moved into fiscal 2017 with normalized compensation practices, under which all performance-related incentive bonus programs are now tied primarily to NetScout's overall results. We also successfully completed the manufacturing transition for both Fluke's systems and portable tools and are now poised to take advantage of supply chain synergies. Similarly, we have completely integrated our technical support organizations. As we move forward, there is more integration work to do in fiscal 2017. One area where we expect to make progress this year is in aligning and integrating the NetScout and former Tektronix Communications business processes and IT systems which we expect will result in operational synergies as well as improved visibility in our combined businesses. Coming to wins and use cases. While the acquisition and integration of Danaher Communications Business has…

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. This morning, I will plan to review key fiscal year 2016 metrics for both the fourth quarter and full year and then I will discuss our guidance for the upcoming fiscal year. There are a number of acquisition related items that impacted our GAAP results. So our convention will be to refer to our non-GAAP result, unless otherwise noted. On a related note and consistent with our comments earlier on the call, the timing and magnitude of the acquisition will impact comparisons with the prior year periods and any other extrapolations of our fourth quarter and full year results may not be representative. When possible, we will frame our results against prior periods on a pro forma basis. As noted earlier on the call, there is an appendix at the end of the slide presentation that provides a reconciliation of the non-GAAP pro forma financials, the trailing eight quarters of pro forma revenue, along with other supplemental details. To begin our financial discussion, we will be starting with slide number 13 of our presentation. I'll briefly cover our fourth quarter performance and focus more of my time on the full year results on a pro forma basis. On a year-over-year pro forma basis, revenue growth was 3.4% for the quarter. Our earnings per share for the quarter was $0.44 which includes the repurchase of approximately 4.9 million shares. Our operating margin for the fourth quarter was 22.4%. Since our last quarter's call, many investors have inquired about the status of the four large deals that affected our outlook for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016. As an update, one of those deals has since closed and one is still under negotiation. The other two deals appear less likely to materialize in the…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our first question from Mark Kelleher with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead. Mark D. Kelleher - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Great. Thanks for taking the question. I want to focus on the modest revenue growth guidance. I know when we started looking at the Danaher deal several months ago, it looked like there will be more growth there. Can you just talk about some of the changes that have happened maybe in the macro or within your expectations that lead us to this modest growth? And what gives you confidence that as we go further out that that growth will be reaccelerated? And then, as my follow-up, just connect that to Fluke and maybe you can give us a little more insight into the Fluke transitional issues? Thanks. Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So thanks for your question. I'll maybe give some color and then maybe Jean can add some comments to that. So I think the big change as we talked about in the last quarter as well as in this call is the macro environment in the service provider Tier-1 spending climate. I think that's the only change. Other areas, I think, we are in track. There are some minor issues related to the transitional issues like it's not really competitive or demand issue on the Fluke side is that we have to transfer all the channel partners into the NetScout contracts and especially in the tools business which was mostly channel-driven. So those are the things which we were talking about there. Moving forward for why there is a confidence of revenue accelerating towards the end of the year is that one of the big reasons to do this is to drive value for our customer with a combined technology solution. And as we mentioned in my portion that we delivered ASI in the form of smart data but we didn't apply that to cyber or big data analytics. And as those things start showing up towards the end of the year, despite some of the challenges in service provider spending climate, I think, we are going to see growth – start seeing growth because that's a much bigger market in terms of the total TAM we'll be able to address. Also some of the things in the Fluke Network area, which we are underpenetrated in the Wi-Fi monitoring space. So we think that most of the integrated solutions will be available toward the end of this year. And that's where we see growth resuming in maybe the last quarter or this fiscal year and definitely in the next year.

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

In term our business changes, just to add to Anil's comments. In the service provider space, they are all focused on 4G, right. And there are multiple phases in the rollout in the lifecycle in the 4G network. Deployment was the early phase, then the rollout applications, including VoLTE. And then they look at capacity or densification as the user start to use more and more the handsets. Right now, they are probably anywhere in the U.S. Tier-1s between lowering up the applications and capacity. What we see in the service provider market is that certain carriers are very focused on quality. The capacity that is being driven that requires them to enhance their network is voice and texting and video, those kinds of applications. Certain service providers are still very interested in operation intelligence and analytics surrounding those voice, text and video. And certain service providers have not placed as much emphasis on that. And they were probably not looking at monitoring that area. But as Anil said, we are very excited about the 5G network, the virtualization in other areas and service provider. And we still continue to see projects in some of the major Tier-1s as well as around the globe as we pointed out that's related to operation intelligence in the 4G environment. The Fluke transition, just to add a little bit more tactical to it. On the go-to-market, during the transition, we lost potentially 20% of the head count, people that decided they would go elsewhere. What we've done is we've rationalized the product line. We have trained the Fluke people. And we're leveraging the existing NetScout as well as the Fluke sales force to be able to sell the products across there. So we see penetration in the SMB market. We see the packet flow being able to go into the SMB market as well as we had invested in our channel programs. And we're coordinating them on a worldwide basis. So we're pretty excited about how we think the Fluke SMB market and the enterprise will go in 2017.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt Hedberg with RBC Capital Markets.

Matthew George Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Yeah. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. Anil, I was curious. As you look at the combined company and the 3G network and application players that you've talked about, what are the decision points customers face when they think about pure software versus maybe hardware-based solution? How should that affect you guys maybe longer-term both in terms of revenue growth and margin expansion? Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I think, short-term, I mean, it looks like a disruptive trend for somebody like us. But since we were not a hardware company to start with, people were choosing to buy our software with appliance or hardware which we got from other vendors or white-label boxes. To us transition to software is very easy. The short-term, I think we are going to see higher margins and we need to sell more copies to make up for the revenue. And I think we'll be able to drive the right balance with our technology and incumbency in those accounts. So, I think, the software trend is a blessing in disguise. It forces us. It reduces the cost for the instrumentation point for NetScout which allows them to actually deploy it in a wider scale. And so, the total revenue – even though the price per unit comes down, because the unbundling of software and hardware actually reduces the cost of ownership, which allows them to drive on a wider scale and compete with solutions, which are lower price and lower value, which are not based on IP intelligence. So I think, overall, as we manage through these changes and next year, like I said, I think, we are going to see a big benefit from this disruptive trend. And I think some of the investors rightly so think that this is a disruptive trend for us. But it's actually a very positive thing for us because it will allow us then to going into areas and market which were not accessible before. And we just have to make sure we manage this transition with our current top end customers properly.

Matthew George Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

That's great. Maybe just a quick follow-up. I am sorry. Go ahead.

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Matt. It's Jean. I was just going to amplify that the NPM market, the service assurance market, that we're in traditionally it does grow in the low mid-single-digits. However, that's mostly focused around data center or not. But what Anil is talking about is that our software provides all the intelligence. And then the multiple form factors we have that includes a virtualized product. We can go further and deeper into people's networks that we could not go before due to cost effectiveness or just physical constraints. Examples of this is clearly in the big data Internet of Things area where we can go on to the TV sets or tabletops of Wi-Fi customers and consumers. We can go into household appliances. We can go into vehicles. So we have many more areas where we can deploy this software and be much more positive impact on our margins. Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I know you have a follow-up but just one to mention. That you all saw the recent Digital China OEM deal we announced. And it was very hard to penetrate and compete with local vendors in China when prices even though we have high-end technology. And if we were to OEM our current products in this current appliance form to somebody like this, there will be a margin hit. So being able to combine local hardware appliances from Digital China with our software allowed us to announce this deal. And now I think we'll be more competitive in this marketplace and yes, customer receiving the best value for the price.

Matthew George Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

That's really helpful. Maybe just a quick one on Arbor. Obviously the DDoS success has been well documented. I am curious for the new ATP (sic) [APT] (00:57:36) functionality, the Spectrum, who do you anticipate the primary competitors for that thing? Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So I think that's an interesting question and maybe a longer discussion. But when you look at the advanced persistent threat, the whole world – I mean there are hundreds of companies in that space. But we think that nobody is combining the real IP intelligence into APT. If you look at – I mean there are companies like FireEye on one side and there are the endpoint-based solutions. But nobody is driving the analytics based on not just signatures but on behavior. So we being instrumented in the service provider network through this ATLAS sensor network, which Arbor has, which sees more than 50% of the Internet traffic and NetScout presence in large banks and enterprise customers, which we call the ASI sensor network provides a wealth of information which is not accessible to any other vendor in the industry, even though I would say there are 100 people who will say they do advanced persistent threat. So the difference is there are companies who have – I mean very smart companies, very good analytics, but not many of them or hardly any of them have the kind of smart data which we have. And I think that creates a smart clear analytics and that's going to be the differentiator. It has been only three months since they announced this product. The ASI smart data is not integrated into that yet. That's going to happen towards the end of the year. And when these things happen, when we have little more runway and we have this integration, I think, it's going to create a very unique product in the market.

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Matt, just to add. I am a finance person, so I am not clearly a technical wizard. But what I understand about cybersecurity is that there are inspections every day. And it takes companies a long time to even realize that they have an attack, over 200 days. When we combine our analytics on network behavior along with the cybersecurity knowledge that Arbor provides, we'll be able to tell those companies a lot faster that they have a threat in their network. To me, the signature is like looking – if you know there is a phone number in a phone book, then you can do that. And there are a lot of companies that can probably find that threat. But if you can actually say the network is behaving weirdly and it's behaving weirdly in this point, go look at it. You can get to malware a lot faster. And that's what we think our product differentiation will be in advanced persistent threat.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll go next to Chad Bennett with Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

Chad Michael Bennett - Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. So, Jean, you talked about being roughly halfway through the original synergy estimates that you guys gave on the deal. So can you give us an idea – and it sounds like based on your commentary that potentially there is more synergies than the original estimate. Maybe I am reading that wrong. But can you give me a sense? The latter half of the synergies sound like they should be more on the COGS line. Should we realize those mainly in this fiscal year and then should we expect more synergies as we get into future years?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Chad. I would say that we are halfway through. And, as I said on the call, (01:01:19) may be a little more than halfway through by the end of the first quarter. When we originally had put that guidance out, we thought we would get more to gross margin. So the upside is that we still will be – InfiniStream NG is being released during FY2017 and we will build a pipeline. We still have a synergy that we saw we would originally get from the InfiniStream NG. And we'll get that through FY2017 but most impactfully through FY2018. The synergies that we've got insofar have been through operating expenses. And we've been slightly pleasantly surprised at some of the areas that we've been able to readjust. So, going forward, I think, we would say that we are very prudent in our cost structure. If you look at the operating cost structure on a pro forma basis, we're definitely focused on improving. And I think we'll get more synergies over the two years than the original $45 million to $55 million. That $45 million to $55 million was predominantly predicated on the combination of the products and our simplification of the businesses of Tektronix in particular. And we will continue to look at that and continue to get operating synergies as well as gross margin synergies as we continue to roll out our platforms. Right now, our head count is at the highest it is and our cost are at the highest it is, because we're really running four different platforms within R&D, within sales and marketing and within the back-office, the traditional administrative infrastructure support. So, FY2017, we're consolidating a lot of those. We focus first on the TSA agreement with Danaher and we're moving through the rest of the organization.

Chad Michael Bennett - Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

Analyst

So it sounds like there certainly is some upside over the next couple years to that original estimate?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Oh, definitely. As we said before, that was just our estimate of the first year. We knew we would be getting more synergies as we did a combination but it was just hard for us to quantify.

Chad Michael Bennett - Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

Analyst

Okay. And in the 31% plus target on operating margins, not to get too far ahead considering you just keep 2017 guide, but do we believe that's a fiscal year 2019 type event or any way to describe how far out that is?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

I think when we had put that 31% out, we had a few assumptions in 2018, 2019, 2020. We are still very confident in the 31% margins. And what we had said is that that operating margin would start to ramp in 2018, 2019 and 2020. It required investment in R&D and sales and marketing in each of those years within the magnitude in each line item of about 10% on average. So, as we go through FY2017, we'll fine-tune that and, as you said, maybe closer to FY2018. So there is the possibility that we could get more before the end of 2020 and it's also a possibility that we could get to the 31% before 2020.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll go next to Alex Kurtz with Sterne Agee.

Alex Kurtz - Sterne Agee CRT

Analyst

Yeah. Can you guys hear me okay? Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah.

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah.

Alex Kurtz - Sterne Agee CRT

Analyst

Hey. So, Jean, glad to hear that you're committing to incremental cost synergies here in the short-term. Anil, I think, there is this feedback from the last earnings call. I think there is a little bit of confusion about what drove the downside in the March guidance. I just want to go back and revisit that because you initially on the last call talked about carrier CapEx weakness. But then as regarding more detail really it sounded like there was just four specific transactions that really impacted your guide for March. And now it sounds like two out of those four deals have closed. So can you help us better understand whether you're seeing a global impact to demand from the carrier space or is it really specific to the old customers? Because I think we all got more detail after last call. It really sounded like it was really specific to a couple customers and not your 150 service providers. And then I have a follow-up. Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I think, so overall, Alex – I mean we maybe talking about those deals and we mentioned that couple of them we don't know when and if they will close. I think there is just general feeling about a tightening spending, especially in U.S. and Europe, which is where we are the biggest. So that, I think, tampers our guidance. And we are the biggest player in this industry by a wide margin. So it affects more us. So I think that's what we were talking about. We talked about those four deals. But, overall, you are seeing in the press the general CapEx and OpEx pressure. And some of the customers thought of a holding part and deciding when they are going to roll out the NFV and virtualize initiative. I think that's the general issue with everyone is facing and yes it affected our previous guidance directly related to those customers. But I think moving forward, the reason we are very cautious about service provider spending is because of all the news which we are hearing. At the same time, we feel towards the end of the year, we have so many other things coming which are going to transcend that issue whether it's in cyber security or big data. And I think we'll be able to manage these challenges better than anyone else in our space.

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Alex. This is Jean. Also just to step back quickly, if you – everybody remembers. When we all came back from new year, the market was just in turmoil. Sitting here now at the beginning of May, there is a little more stability in the outlook for the market. What we saw at the beginning of the year, as you had said, is four deals where all four of those companies, those Tier-1 providers, decided that they wanted to be cautious in their spending. One of those Tier-1s has continued to spend. And we closed one of those deals. The other Tier-1 was looking at an enterprise-wide license. They are still negotiating. We are in their administrative processes at this point. And, as I said earlier on the call, there are certain carriers that I would either say are distressed and they are just continually looking at their CapEx and OpEx pressures. And they used to be good growth for us. So it makes it a difficult comparison. And then, finally, as I had mentioned on the call, the 4G wave. While they ae in different phases around the globe, in the large Tier-1s that have a lot of spending, they are moving into an application capacity. Certain carriers, whether they are distressed or whether they are not, do not care as much about operational intelligence and things that are driving capacity like testing or video. And so that's really the dynamic that we see at a much more granular level across the service provider base.

Alex Kurtz - Sterne Agee CRT

Analyst

Jean, the enterprise license deal that's moving into the administrative process. Is that the SDN deal that you guys have been working on?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

It is a software only deal. Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: It's not an SDN deal but it's based on the software model.

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. It's a software – just to be clear, like virtualization is a virtualized network, we have a software only product and that is moving into a traditional network. So, as I said earlier, we have many form factors that our customers can enjoy based on what suits them the best.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street Capital.

Eric Martinuzzi - Lake Street Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

One of the points you mentioned back in August after the transaction closed was really this was about a more capable product set being sold to the existing customers, both the Danaher installed base as well as the legacy NetScout base. What changes have you made to the FY2017 comp plan to really penetrate that existing customer base? Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So, I think, as we mentioned, I mean, on day one itself, like in August itself, we combined the common sales forces. So first thing we did was we reduced the conflict or eliminated the conflict and quota conflict and things like that in joint account. Fortunately, we were not dominant – both sides were not dominant in the same – not too many same accounts. So we have put a single regional manager or VP on top of it like for Europe and other places in a single account. We have joint quota. And so that's one thing we have done. Second is I have gone around to almost all the carriers and we have made the presentation to people and get our sales team excited about the combined product which is actually coming out this quarter which is the InfiniStream NG. And people are very excited about it. There have been some comp plan changes in terms of alignment that at Tek Comm has a different structure than NetScout had. And now everything is aligned. We have a single sales force system for forecasting. So all these things is making it look like from a sales point of view and a comp plan point of view it's like a non-event. And that one thing we feel we don't have to worry about. And despite so many changes and spending challenges in service providers, we have really not lost any key people.

Eric Martinuzzi - Lake Street Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

And the other way you penetrate these accounts is with your household name partners. It's something that I know has been – I don't even anticipate it as FY2017 event but partnering with the big names in tech, the HPs, the IBMs, the Ciscos of the world. Any update there? Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: There is nothing to announce even though all these people – I mean as recently as this quarter, we had meetings with them at a very, very high level. And I think something should happen in the fiscal year 2017. And one of the interesting things – there are many partnership opportunity. One of them, which is already happening like the Digital China thing, there are other places they want to use HP servers. Some places they will use Fujitsu servers like in Japan. So that creates the opportunity for resellers and for us to sign a big reseller with Digital China was one of them in China but they cover only China. And here is more incentive for them to bundle our software with the servers which are local. And that makes it easy to fulfil deals at a lower price to the customer, while our margins increase. So that's one type of partnership. Other type of partnership is all these partners, whether it's Ericsson or Cisco or IBM and HP, they are all looking for data and especially the ASI data which we have and reopening our platform later this year for that to be consumed by them. And in order to produce that data, they will need our InfiniStream appliances is the second area of partnership. And third is long time ago, I would say, 10 years, 15 years ago, we are very successful in embedding our software in Cisco switches, digital, cable driven, all those people. And it was one of the very successful partnership direction. This could happen in the end of the area also but the partners could be Cisco, Ericsson and all those. So I am very excited about these. I mean everyone wants to partner with big players, but you need a way to do that also. You just don't need – everyone wants to partner with big players, but the recipe is not there or the reason – a win-win situation is not there. And I think with this acquisition and some of the things we have been investing recently, I think those possibilities are going to open up.

Andrew M. Kramer - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Next question, operator?

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Matt Robison with Wunderlich Securities.

Matt Robison - Wunderlich Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Hey. Thanks for the question and taking the question and all the details you're providing. Jean, can you say when you think you'll be done with those combination services and then a little color on cash flow with the operating cash flow, CapEx and depreciation?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

I am sorry. What was the first part of the question?

Matt Robison - Wunderlich Securities, Inc.

Analyst

When you think you'll be done with post combination services expenses?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Okay. So, what that represents, the post combination services, is the compensation that Danaher put in to certain employees to retain them. The last came – and it's completely reimbursed to us. So the last – under GAAP, however, it requires that you expense it. So the last payment is due in August of this year. So we should be done with the deal-related compensation probably in, what is that, our Q3 of fiscal year 2017. Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Q2.

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Q2. Yes. At the beginning of Q3, we should not have deal-related compensation.

Matt Robison - Wunderlich Securities, Inc.

Analyst

When do you think you'll no longer require the services for Danaher for collection and the other things they are doing for you?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Right now, what we did was we focused on getting off those transitional support agreements. And Danaher will no longer collect for us starting in the beginning of this fiscal year. So we've moved basically the order to quote the cash processes in-house and we'll be doing the collections ourselves going forward.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll go next to Scott Zeller with Needham & Company. Scott Zeller - Needham & Co. LLC: Hi. Good morning. I wanted to just refine the fiscal first quarter guidance, if I may. I think you mentioned 2% year-on-year growth for the 1Q versus the pro forma number from last year's 1Q. And it seems that you're working off a base of roughly $268.2 million, just so everyone is on the same page?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes. Scott Zeller - Needham & Co. LLC: And looking for 2% growth off of that?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes, about 2% growth in the first quarter. Scott Zeller - Needham & Co. LLC: Okay.

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

And, as I said, we had – in Q2 of last year it was $288.5 million. That represented about 7% to 8% growth. And that the downside to service providers is that it tends to be lumpy. And we have talked in last quarter about – in the Q2 quarter about a $50 million plus project that was closing. So we're still analyzing our pipeline and looking at Q2 to be able to determine what we think that will be. Scott Zeller - Needham & Co. LLC: We heard color earlier in your prepared remarks about operating margin and the outlook for fiscal 2017. But we didn't really hear any specifics about gross. Could you tell us how you expect gross margin to trend through fiscal 2017?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

To trend during the quarter? Scott Zeller - Needham & Co. LLC: Well, any color on fiscal 2017 gross margin, let's leave it at that.

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Sure. So, in the gross margin that we ended with, it was about 75%. Depending on where you are in the guidance range, we should be able to get to at least 0.5 percentage point to 1 percentage point better. And that is due to some of the work that we're doing in certain of the production areas. As Michael had said, we've focused on the TSA for Fluke. We've brought the manufacturing in-house. We would like to see gross margin improvement in there. And then as we introduce the InfiniStream NG, which has a simpler approach than some of the former tech products, as a pipeline, except for that, that should also increase gross margin percentage.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll go next to Kevin Liu with B. Riley & Company. Kevin Liu - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Hi. Good morning. First question I had was just for the software only deal that you're talking about on an enterprise licensing basis. Can you give us a sense for how the customer plans to deploy? For instance, are they going to be able to deploy at more points throughout the network, the way you've kind of talked about? And how do you try to go about determining pricing for that? Just curious if there is any pricing pressure on a peripheral (01:18:31) basis or anything of nature. Anil K. Singhal - Founder, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. So by enterprise license – so this is not a big – it's not a Tier-1 carrier but it's a very high-end customer of NetScout. So I think, first of all, the enterprise license usually is a step number two. They have to feel good about deals. They have to be – you have to be an incumbent which luckily we are, either us or Tek is incumbent in most accounts. And then they say where we like we want to deploy it companywide. So enterprise license by definition there is a small charge per location but it's unlimited license. And it's usually a multi-year thing. And that's the reason we are doing it. So it's a good thing for us that it basically locks in some revenue for the future year. So this allows them unlimited use of our technology with whatever conditions. If it is a multi-country thing, then we may allow in one country versus all countries. But, in general, enterprise license means that, even for probes which we couldn't do before. We had enterprise license for nGeniusONE, those kind of things. But we couldn't do that for probe because it was bundled with appliance. And we couldn't deploy the unlimited license. Now we have the ability, so this is the one which Jean was talking about. Kevin Liu - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Got it. And a follow-up for Jean, if I can. On the deferred revenue line, that was up nicely on a sequential basis as well. And I know that's a seasonal trend for you. But I am just wondering if there was anything outside the normal seasonality that drove that upside?

Jean A. Bua - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Kevin. No, nothing comes to mind that was outside the norm for the deferred revenue.

Operator

Operator

And it appears we have no further questions. I'll return the program to our presenters for closing remarks.

Andrew M. Kramer - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, operator. And I'd like to thank everybody for their time and attention today. I appreciate all the questions. We'll be available throughout the day if people do have follow-up questions. You know how to get a hold of Investor relations at NetScout. We look forward to staying in touch with you over the course of the quarter and look forward to seeing you in person at different conference events. Thank you all very much again for participating. We appreciate your time.

Operator

Operator

And this does conclude today's program. Thanks for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.