Bruce McClelland
Analyst · Christian Schwab with Craig-Hallum Capital Group
Great. Thanks, Joni. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today to discuss our Q3 results and outlook for the rest of the year. First, as many of you know, Mick Lopez announced his plan to retire and will be with us through the end of the month. As I've stated before, Mick has been instrumental in maturing the operations of the company and accomplishing multiple strategic initiatives. Mick, thank you for your leadership and contributions to Ribbon and all the best to you in your retirement. I'd now like to welcome John Townsend, who is joining us as Chief Financial Officer effective November 1. John is a proven financial leader with an impressive career that spans over 30 years, leading large, complex financial organizations for several of the industry's largest service providers in multiple countries. Given our focus in this area and the continued gains we're making, I'm really looking forward to the insight John will bring us. He'll be available in our Q&A session this afternoon. Now on to Q3 results. I'm very pleased with our performance in the quarter, highlighted by the return to growth in our Cloud & Edge business. As we indicated on our last earnings call, we have a number of tailwinds that will support and underpin this business for years to come and will have a positive effect on the overall margins for the company. And while IP Optical Network sales were lower year-over-year this quarter following the suspension of product sales to Eastern Europe beginning last quarter, we are growing in other areas. In fact, we're having a very strong second half in the U.S., where our cross-sell strategy is working well, and we have numerous projects focused on expanding rural Internet availability and capacity. We also continue to see more opportunities related to competitive shifts in the market where customers are assessing their options to replace incumbent suppliers, and we have very good opportunities to gain market share. One of the most notable areas of growth for us across both businesses is the federal and defense industry. Year-to-date, sales have grown 60% as compared to 2023 and accounted for 13% of overall sales so far this year. Our portfolio of secure communication applications and network infrastructure is a great fit for this important market. In the U.S. Defense segment, we have developed a very strong position with multiple branches of the Armed Forces as they replace legacy systems with modern cloud-based voice solutions that provide the security and survivability needed to carry out their combat and peacekeeping missions. And in Europe, our secure IP and optical data networking platforms are widely deployed in countries such as Israel, Switzerland and Finland. Our combined portfolio has brought applicability across many more federal agencies and countries, creating opportunity for significant further growth. In the third quarter, overall sales were $210 million, increasing 3.5% year-over-year and 9% quarter-over-quarter, led by the growth in Cloud & Edge. Earnings were once again very solid and at the top end of our guidance with adjusted non-GAAP EBITDA of $30 million. Non-GAAP gross margin of 55% exceeded expectations and was at the high end of guidance with a positive mix of product sales and good execution from our Professional Services team. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $90 million in the quarter, up slightly year-over-year, mostly due to midyear employee compensation adjustments. Year-to-date, profitability for the company has increased $15 million or 32% on an adjusted EBITDA basis as compared to 2023. Trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA is now $106 million. Now a little more detail on our operating segments. In the Cloud & Edge business, as expected, sales to Verizon increased substantially in the quarter, reaching 15% of overall company sales. The initial 3-year phase of the voice network modernization project we announced earlier this year is fully underway, and the combined Verizon and Ribbon team are executing very well. Our revenue run rate is now exceeding $100 million per year with this key customer and is expected to grow in 2025. In the U.S. federal market, we announced an important project win to modernize and secure the U.S. federal softswitch backbone with our state-of-the-art voice communication infrastructure. We now have deployments in 4 branches of the U.S. military as we continue to expand our presence in defense networks across the globe. One of the key drivers behind the improved gross margin this quarter was the increase in SBC sales and the greater software mix. This is one of the best quarters for SBC sales that we've had in several years, up more than 60% from the third quarter last year. This included sales across a number of markets, including U.S. and international service providers, U.S. federal and a number of large enterprise customers. Also, as I mentioned earlier, we're in active discussion with a number of customers regarding the replacement of Microsoft Metaswitch platforms. We have a large funnel of opportunities, and we've closed several initial deals this quarter. We also closed a sizable project with our partner, JSC, to provide a full IMS voice platform, leveraging our SBC and policy solutions along with their IMS core. This is a relatively new area for us and has the potential for us to gain share in a portion of the market where we've not fully addressed in the past. Overall, Cloud & Edge revenue in the third quarter was $128 million, up 11% year-over-year and 16% quarter-over-quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin neared an all-time high at 68% and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA contribution grew 20% year-over-year to $38 million or 30% of revenue for the quarter, also near an all-time high. Book-to-bill was very strong at over 1.4x with an increasing backlog associated with network transformation projects. In summary, this was a great quarter for our Cloud & Edge business and sets us up for an even stronger performance in the fourth quarter. In our IP Optical segment, the highlight of the quarter was certainly the increased business in the U.S. As mentioned in our last earnings call, we had very good backlog entering the quarter in the U.S. market, particularly with regional and rural broadband providers. This resulted in our strongest quarter ever in the U.S. with revenue increasing more than 100%, both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year and accounted for more than 20% of IP Optical sales. We expect the momentum in the U.S. to continue in the fourth quarter across a number of use cases and customers, including U.S. rural and regional broadband Middle Mile transport, TDM circuit emulation with an increasing number of service providers, as well as critical infrastructure providers such as American Electric Power. And we anticipate further growth in 2025 as larger service providers accelerate their modernization of the TDM infrastructure and leverage our IP routing technology. IP Optical sales to operators in India, including Bharti and Vodafone Idea, increased 16% quarter-over-quarter, but are tracking a little below last year's level. We continue to expect the fourth quarter to be the best of the year in this region with the second half approximately 30% higher than the first half of the year. This is in large part due to the renewed investment being made by Vodafone Idea to upgrade their network infrastructure. In Europe, IP Optical sales in the quarter increased 15% year-over-year and are up 17% year-to-date. Central Europe continues to be our strongest region, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where we have a good mix of critical infrastructure, service provider and defense customers supporting the business. We also have a good pipeline of opportunities with service providers in Southern Europe, including Italy and Spain. Finally, from an innovation perspective, at the recent next-generation optical networking event in Paris, we demonstrated the industry's first 400-gig ZR+ module that supports field upgradability to 800-gig ZR+. This enables operators to cost effectively support both metro and long-haul transport on a single module, enhancing performance and cost efficiencies with an open interoperable architecture. Our new Apollo 9408 compact modular platform provides industry-leading density with 25.6 terabits per 2 rack units and an impressive low power consumption of less than 0.07 watts per gigabit. This is a great platform ideally suited for growing data center demand. From a financial perspective, IP Optical revenue in the third quarter was $82 million, down 6% year-over-year and flat to the second quarter. But excluding sales to Eastern Europe, revenue from all other customers was up 4% year-over-year. As expected, gross margins were lower at 36% as a result of the change in mix. Book-to-bill was 1.0x in the quarter after adjustments associated with Eastern Europe. Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA for IP Optical was negative $8 million, down $4 million from the prior year. Year-to-date, adjusted EBITDA is $21 million improved over the first 3 quarters of last year. Now let me wrap up on our third quarter results with a few key operational metrics that Mick would normally comment on. John will pick this up next quarter. Cash from operations was a negative $15 million, and we ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $40 million. This was lower than anticipated due to approximately $25 million of accounts receivable collections expected at the end of September that were delayed into October, increasing our quarter end AR by approximately $40 million. More than half this amount was already received in the first 2 weeks of October, and we expect positive cash generation this quarter with AR staying at a similar level due to significant increase in shipments this quarter. Interest expense in the quarter was $10 million, reflecting our new credit facility, but we will benefit from the 50-basis-point SOFR rate reduction recently implemented. We also invested $7 million this quarter as we prepare to relocate an R&D facility and $2 million in typical CapEx investment. We now estimate a non-GAAP tax rate for the full year of approximately 40% given shifts in regional profit and loss contributions. Now a few comments on the fourth quarter and outlook for 2025. The operating environment continues to improve and presents an excellent opportunity for us to maintain our momentum, growing revenue and profitability. Specific trends influencing our business include the following key areas: First, network modernization to drive down cost and retire obsolete infrastructure is a key factor behind the increasing investment from service providers, enterprises and federal agencies to upgrade their voice communication infrastructure. Legacy TDM and copper networks are increasingly expensive to support and programs such as the Verizon voice core modernization project are clear evidence of the priority now being placed on this part of the network. We have a growing number of sizable projects with other large service providers that will drive further growth in our cloud & edge secure communications business in 2025 and in years to come. Second, as I mentioned earlier, we're having very good success in federal and defense sectors in the U.S. and Europe. Mission-critical applications that rely on highly secure networks that are always on and never fail. This is an area where Ribbon really differentiates from the competition. Third, there continues to be substantial investment to improve Internet availability and performance for underserved segments of the broadband market. This is an area where we're really executing well on our cross-sell strategy and the upcoming U.S. BEAD program will further increase funding across the entire ecosystem. And finally, the shifting competitive environment is creating further opportunity for Ribbon to win new accounts across multiple regions. In the IP optical space, the merger of Nokia and Infinera introduces supply chain concerns that we expect to capitalize on. And Microsoft has generated significant uncertainty around the Metaswitch installed base that introduces substantial replacement opportunities for us. The focus we have on cross-selling the entire portfolio to our broad base of customers continues to generate results as highlighted by the success we're having with U.S. rural broadband providers. And the integration of our Neptune IP router with our voice transformation portfolio has opened doors across the entire U.S. service provider landscape to modernize the aging TDM voice network, leveraging our IP routing technology. While it's still early, we expect the combination of these opportunities to enable us to grow revenue in 2025 in the mid-single-digit range even after accounting for the reduction in sales to Eastern Europe. We do not anticipate significant changes in operating expenses, enabling the majority of the incremental margin to contribute directly to earnings, where we expect to grow at a double-digit rate. In the fourth quarter, we continue to expect an excellent finish to the year with sequential growth in both businesses. Voice modernization programs with Verizon and multiple other carriers will continue to ramp, and we anticipate several new awards with U.S. Federal Defense agencies. We expect the momentum in the U.S. rural broadband segment to continue at similar levels to the third quarter. And we expect a seasonally strong quarter with enterprise customers as we renew annual enterprise license agreements. Our guidance for the fourth quarter projects year-over-year sales growth of approximately 8% at the midpoint, reflecting all of these positive trends. We anticipate gross margin to be slightly higher than the notable level we posted in the third quarter due to the expected higher mix of Cloud & Edge sales. Based on this, for the fourth quarter, we're projecting revenue in a range of $235 million to $255 million, non-GAAP gross margins in a range of 55.5% to 56% and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA in a range of $46 million to $52 million. We certainly recognize that our guidance for the fourth quarter implies significant sequential growth. But as I've outlined, we have good momentum across multiple areas, along with strong bookings in the third quarter that provide good visibility and confidence for an excellent finish for the year. Overall, we're making good progress on our key strategic goals, including returning to growth in our telco voice infrastructure business, diversifying and expanding sales in enterprise market verticals, including financial, health care, energy, transportation and government information security, cross-selling the entire portfolio, particularly in the U.S. and achieving sustainable profitable growth in our IP Optical business and accelerating innovation and capturing cost efficiencies with the full integration of our product teams. Operator, that concludes our prepared remarks, and we can now take a few questions.