Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Erik Bylin. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and welcome to NETGEAR's second quarter of 2024 financial results conference call. Joining us from the company are Mr. CJ Prober, CEO; and Mr. Bryan Murray, CFO. The format of the call, we'll start with commentary on the business provided by CJ, followed by a review of the financials for the second quarter and guidance for the third quarter provided by Bryan. We'll then have time for any questions. If you've not received a copy of today's release, please visit NETGEAR's Investor Relations website at www.netgear.com. Before we begin the formal remarks, we advise you that today's conference call contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding expected revenue, operating margins, tax expense, expenses and future business outlook. Actual results or trends could differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in NETGEAR's periodic filings with the SEC, including the most recent Form 10-K. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today and NETGEAR undertakes no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events except as required by law. In addition several non-GAAP financial measures will be mentioned on this call. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP to GAAP measures can be found in today's press release on our Investor Relations website. At this time, I would now like to turn the call over to CJ.

Good afternoon, and welcome to today's call. On our call last quarter, I outlined a plan for transforming NETGEAR with a focus on creating long-term value for shareholders. Q2 was a foundational first step in this transformation, and I'm happy to report that, it was a very successful quarter. We outlined a series of decisive actions to address some of our immediate challenges and the team delivered with stellar execution. Some of these actions represent a dramatic shift in how NETGEAR has operated over the past several years, and we were able to adapt without losing a beat in the midst of a significant strategic reorganization. This gives me a ton of confidence in our ability to build on this momentum and deliver on our long-term value creation goals. I'll take a few minutes to highlight some of the specific accomplishments for this past quarter. We were successful at destocking the channel at the high end of our $25 million to $30 million target, which puts us in a position to drive more linearity in the business, by more closely matching sell in with sell through on a go forward basis. I can say with confidence that, the channel destocking is now behind us. We also made great progress in lowering our inventory position by executing on its $22 million decrease, which was above our target for the quarter and resulted in an inventory position that is down 24%, since the beginning of the year. We continue to focus on reducing our inventory position with the goal of exiting the year with approximately three months of supply. While this quarter's results were obviously challenged, by our destocking and balance sheet inventory reduction efforts, our revenue and non-GAAP operating margin also came in above the high end of our guidance range,…

Thank you, CJ, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. We are pleased with the execution by our team this quarter in delivering both revenue and profitability above our guidance range, while also delivering on our goal to destock the channel in an accelerated fashion and continuing our trajectory of lowering our own on hand inventory. Both sides of the business contributed to this outperformance. In CHP, we saw continued strength in premium products, and service provider revenue came in better-than-expected. Within NFB, we experienced a record quarter in end market sales of our ProAV managed switch products. For the quarter ended June 30, 2024, revenue was $143.9 million down 12.6% on a sequential basis and down 17% year-over-year, above the high end of our guidance, even as we reached the higher end of our accelerated channel inventory destocking plan. We also drove a $22.3 million decrease in our owned inventory during the quarter, helping us generate positive free cash flow. We executed on our plan in accelerating destocking of the channel in the second quarter, as we lowered channel inventory at the upper end of our targeted range of $25 million to $30 million that we shared last quarter, with particular benefit on the NFB side. With this strong execution, we do not anticipate any further meaningful destocking and are now well-positioned to match sell in with sell through going forward. This strategic action, although a headwind to our revenue and profitability in the second quarter, was an important step going forward, as we hone the operations for both CHP and NFP businesses for long-term success. We now have better-positioned both businesses for a more predictable performance that is aligned to the market trends and removed the varied swings that come from shifting channel inventory levels. In the…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Adam Tindle with Raymond James. Your line is open.

I just want to start, maybe, both CJ and Bryan can weigh in on this one. On operating results, obviously, kind of in line with expectations, the operating loss just over $30 million in the quarter. You also said that channel destock is done and it was about $30 million of a headwind behind us with great confidence. If I look at the Q3 guidance, it looks like at the midpoint, it's implying an operating loss still of $15 million or so. I guess the question would be, what are the drivers that are still weighing on operating loss and the trajectory beyond Q3 and time to breakeven would be helpful?

Yes. Maybe I'll take a stab at that, Adam. I would say, some of the biggest headwinds we're still facing is the higher cost at inventory. As we've said, we're going to be saddled with that, until we can get to our optimal level of carrying inventory, which is about three months. We're making progress there on the finished goods side, but we still have some other raw materials chipsets mainly that we bought as a risk mitigation strategy that we have to work on to kind of get there. But you can see we're continuing to work down our inventory. So that's probably in the neighborhood of 300 basis points to 400 basis points of additional headwind. The other significant impact we're still facing here is the higher cost of freight incoming off the back of the Red Sea crisis. We are seeing surges in container rates that are reaching up over $8,000 a container. And so, that's adding another 200 basis points of operating margin pressure. The other thing I will mention is the top-line leverage. Q3 obviously is a meaningful step-up at 16% sequential growth at the midpoint. But as you can see from the service provider guide, it's down. It's a down quarter at $15 million, as we're waiting for the mobile hotspot launch in early part of Q4. As we continue to round out our portfolio that's taxed at the good, better, best strategy and get some additional revenue scale that will give us operating leverage, those are probably the bigger drivers in terms of improving from where we're at on the operating margin.

The two things I would add, Adam. One is, it's tied to inventory again. So in addition to having kind of a lower base to distribute our fixed cost against. We are still working through some of the legacy inventory and that really brings down margin, because we're looking to exit that more aggressively at lower price points. And once we -- you never completely done that, but once we get through, we still have a fairly decent chunk of that, you'll see kind of margins improve in line with the fixed cost allocation and the headwind we see there. The other thing is we are investing, if you equate it on an annual run rate basis, we're investing about $2 million in our NETGEAR for Business go-to-market efforts. I kind of signaled this on the last call that we'd be doing that. Those investments take time to generate the revenue and ROI associated with them. But we have clear opportunities to further scale that business and we're seeing great momentum as we said on the call on ProAV. We're making good progress on Wi-Fi LAN. And so, those investments are going to hit the P&L in the second half, but we'll start to see the payoff later next year.

Bryan, I think you also talked about, in your prepared remarks, talking about restructuring the organization. Obviously, CJ is just mentioning, $2 million in the NFP segment for investment. I guess on a go-forward basis as you think about restructuring the organization, is there kind of a ballpark that you're thinking about in terms of run rate quarterly OpEx? It's been fairly consistent, somewhere around $65 million or mid-60s per quarter. Are we thinking that, there's going to be sort of a different level for NETGEAR going forward and what would that be?

It's probably a little bit too early to say, as we've been talking about we're going through a strategic review that we're making great progress on, but probably will carry on to early October timeframe that will help define the kind of longer-term strategies of the business and when investments beyond the $2 million that CJ referenced that we may want to invest in the business for the long-term value creation. So we’re going to look at it. I will say, in the near-term, we are probably looking at a mid to high single-digits increase in OpEx in the back half of the year is probably the expected run rate. Some of that is due obviously with the increase in revenues. And then we're also continuing to put forth efforts with regards to this TP-Link case and some has some incremental legal expenses associated with that.

I want to ask on TP-Link and feel free to boot me, if there's other questions here, but I'll continue to go. On TP-Link, in terms of the outcome, is there a way for us to think about their market share in your core markets and size that opportunity? Just any kind of parameters that you're thinking about. I know it's tough in terms of market share for us. Anything that you have in terms of sizing that potential opportunity. And then secondly, what you're thinking about doing? Obviously, we're kind of cart before the horse here, but provided that the outcome could be ultimately that's favorable, what you can put in place or do to capture that?

From a market share perspective in the product categories that matter about equivalent to us. They've they're a formidable competitor. They've grown their shares quite significantly over the last few years. That's why this is a very big deal for us. And then, the way that this flows through the ITC and comes into action, it takes time for all that to take effect and for any inventory that they've got in the channel to sell through et cetera, et cetera. We are building plans to be in a position to take advantage of that when it comes to fruition.

I guess in light of that, how are you thinking about destocking levels and your ability to capture more real time sales, if this outcome does become favorable for you or even outside of that, just broadly speaking destocking and ability to capture POS?

Yes. Good question. The destocking, that was a big effort from the team this quarter. And we executed on that while achieving our sell-through goals. Really proud of the effort there. We feel like we're on an aggregate basis in a great spot. I would say, like everything, there's not perfect synchronicity across all regions and all channels. I would say, some of our channels and some of our regions are probably at unsustainably low levels. And even in the absence of macroeconomic improvements around the cost of capital and what not, which I think is a longer-term opportunity for us in increasing the stocking in the channel. But even absent that there's some parts of the channel that will likely need to stock up, because they're at dangerously low levels. Similarly, there's other parts where we could probably be a little lower. On an aggregate basis, we're in a great place. And then, we would want to match sell in with sell through no matter what happens with TP-Link or otherwise as we grow our business. I mean, that's just an important kind of philosophical change that we've implemented here. And that allows better linearity, better working capital efficiencies. As we increase our sell through, we would increase our sell into the channel, to match that. My philosophy is I'd rather be supply constrained than have to go and chase demand. We're seeing the benefits of that approach now.

Just a couple more. I wanted to maybe double click on the announcement for additional share repurchase. Can you just walk us through that decision, on that authorization and particularly why you and the Board thought that, this was the correct level for a share repurchase?

Yes. From my vantage point, it's pretty much the path we've been on. Obviously, we spend a lot of time evaluating how we allocate capital. But, if you look back historically speaking over the years, we've putout authorizations of a similar magnitude and executed on them and typically would replenish as we get to a lower point. Obviously, the previous authorization were down to about 875,000 shares. Again, we're evaluating our strategic plan go forward, what investments we may want to make elsewhere. But in the meantime, we continue to believe that, stock repurchase is a healthy way to allocate our capital at this point in time and it was appropriate time to up the authorization.

Maybe last one, the subscription story with the other piece in here at NETGEAR at CJ that I wanted to ask about. You talked about some of the new metrics and some of the things that you're looking at, but maybe taking a step back. Could you just walk us through maybe evaluating what you inherited, how you kind of went through the evaluation of the current subscription strategy, then go into specifically what you're changing? And lastly, how these new metrics will work?

Yes. Maybe let me start at the highest level, which is, as we transform the business, stronger software execution and more recurring revenue is a consistent theme across both business units. If you take each business unit separately on NFB, our Wi-Fi LAN attaches a subscription with insight. That's an area, of course, we talked about adding Pramod. Pramod has spent his entire career building software for networking use cases at Cisco, Ruckus and Arista, obviously incredibly experienced here. There's a big opportunity to improve our execution and our recurring revenue on the NETGEAR for Business side. Pramod is the perfect person to lead that effort. It's small today. We are starting to win large transactions. As I mentioned on the call, those attach nicely from a recurring revenue perspective. But, if you look at just the market generally, we under index on recurring revenue relative to the devices that we sell and we're going to change that and that's a big focus for Pramod. Really excited about the opportunity there. On the consumer side, we've made great progress building a subscription attached business with Armour. And as I talked about on the last call, we're making a number of adjustments to simplify the offering for consumers. One kind of foundational thing that we're going to be doing differently going forward is we really have two classes of subscribers today. One class of subscriber buys a device. There's no bundle of armor included. They discover armor through the app, and they subscribe. They give us their credit card, and the subscription metrics associated with that are really great. The retention is strong. We've got work to do, which aligns with the simplification effort to improve the conversion to trial and the trial to paid. But overall, that's a really healthy recurring revenue business. When I say, there's 544,000 of those, of the 958,000 that's what I'm referring to. They've discovered the subscription largely through the app, maybe through our website or through an e-mail, and they've subscribed and they're recurring. On the other subscribers of that 958,000 it's called about 400,000 of them, we acquired them via product bundle. The subscription value is included typically for a year. And its confusing to consumers. Are they getting that? Is it free? We don't collect their credit card. It's really not recurring. And the conversion at the end of that one year free trial isn't strong. And so we’re going to -- we made the decision to move away from the product bundles. So we're going to be just offering subscription as a standalone attach, after a consumer buys one of our networking devices. And our focus will be on converting those purchasers into recurring subscribers and moving away from the product bundles.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to CJ. Prober for closing remarks.

Thanks for joining and see you next quarter.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.