Earnings Labs

Viavi Solutions Inc. (VIAV)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 12, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Q4 2014 JDSU Earnings Conference Call. My name is Whitney, and I'll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Mr. Bill Ong, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed, sir.

Bill Ong

Management

Thank you, Whitney. Welcome to JDSU's fiscal fourth quarter and year end 2014 earnings call. My name is Bill Ong, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Joining me on today's call are Tom Waechter, CEO; and Rex Jackson, CFO. David Heard, President of our Network & Service Enablement Business Unit, NSE; and Alan Lowe, President of our Communications & Commercial Optical Products Business Unit, CCOP will join us for Q&A. Please note, this call will include forward-looking statements about the company's financial performance. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. We encourage you to review our most recent filings with the SEC, particularly the risk factors in Part I, Item 1A of our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on August 23, 2013. The forward-looking statements including guidance we will provide during this call are valid only as of today. JDSU undertakes no obligation to update these statements. Please note, also that, unless otherwise stated, all results are non-GAAP, which excludes, among other items, amortization of acquired technology and other intangibles, stock-based compensation and restructuring charges. We include a detailed reconciliation of these non-GAAP results to our GAAP financials, as well as a discussion of their usefulness and limitation in today's earnings release. The release, plus our supplemental slides and historical financial tables are available on our website. Finally, we are recording this call today and will make the recording available by 6 p.m. Pacific Time this evening on our website. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom.

Tom Waechter

Management

Thank you, Bill. Our fiscal fourth quarter 2014 revenue at $448.6 million exceeded the high-end of our guidance range. Book-to-bill was greater than 1 for JDSU with both CCOP and Optical Security and Performance Products or OSP above 1 and NSE at parity on a strong quarter. Gross margin at 50% is a 15-year record high for JDSU and NSE’s gross margin at 65.5% also achieved a new high. I was also encouraged to see both OSP and commercial laser at approximately 50% at the gross margin line. Fiscal year 2014 revenue grew 4% year-on-year to $1.74 billion, what turnout to be a challenging telecom spending period, mostly due to major architectural changes in play in the industry focused on software defined networks and network function virtualization into significant industry consolidation. The JDSU team achieved a number of key milestones in fiscal 2014. I just mentioned, gross margins improved up 160 basis points year-on-year. We continue to innovate at a rapid pace the products less than two years old generating 61% of revenue for our network-related businesses. We continue to invest significant R&D in key product areas, important to growth in fiscal 2015 and beyond in area such as SDN, virtualization, enhance security and faster broadband access. The company generated $177 million of operating cash and repurchased $160 million or 12.7 million shares of stock. We completed three acquisitions as part of our continuing strategy to diversify beyond our core telecom customer base and enter new growth markets such as enterprise and applications management. We establish CCOP as the leader in the Datacom market and commercial lasers exceeded $40 million in quarterly revenue for the first time. I’m pleased with these accomplishments which I believe position JDSU well for sustainable revenue growth and growth in operating margin expansion over the…

Rex Jackson

Management

Thank you, Tom. JDSU's fiscal fourth quarter 2014 revenue was $448.6 million, up 7.3% from last quarter and up 6.5% year-on-year, and exceeded our revenue guidance range of $425 million to $445 million. Geographically, the Americas accounted for $216.5 million up 5.9% from last year, EMEA for $100.7 million up 16% and Asia-Pacific for $131.4 million up 1.1%. The geographic sales mix was 49% for the Americas, 22% for EMEA and 29% for Asia-Pacific. Gross margin at 50% was up 240 basis points from last quarter and up 390 basis points from a year ago. All three business segments contributed to the improvement. Operating expenses at $185.1 million were up 7.7% sequentially from $171.9 million higher than our previous commentary and reflecting increased R&D investments in both NSE and CCOP strategic growth areas and higher sales commissions and bonuses. Our GAAP results included $20 million in restructuring expenses from Q4 plans adopted by NSE, CCOP and shared services to reduce our operating expenses longer term. We anticipate future annualized cost savings of more than $30 million as a result of restructuring activities initiated in fiscal 2014. Operating margin at 8.7% was at the high end of our guidance range of 7% to 9% on higher revenue and gross margin, up from Q3 of 6.5% and up year-on-year from 7.2%. Net income was $34.2 million, up 46.2% from our third quarter, again due to higher revenue and gross margin levels and up 12.5% from a year ago. Similarly, EPS was $0.14 versus $0.10 last quarter and $0.13 a year ago. For the year, revenue at $1.74 billion grew 4% from fiscal 2013’s $1.68 billion. Our gross margin improved by 160 basis points to 48.1% versus 46.5% a year ago. Operating margin at 8.7% is flat year-on-year. Our net income at $133.1…

Tom Waechter

Management

Thanks, Rex. Historically, the September quarter is seasonally soft for the NE business. Moreover, the traditional test and measurement business has been particularly challenging for network test equipment providers during the past several years. Especially, in the last four quarters, we expect these challenges to continue in the immediate future. North American carrier have ratcheted down wireline spending while redeployed investments in wireless infrastructure have been tepid due to rapid changes in network technology architectures. Given our leadership position in many of these markets, we are also subject to these macroeconomic industry forces that have adversely impacted the NE business. However, these changes in technology validate our focus on identifying emerging technologies that allowed us to meaningfully grow the SE business. As a result, the industry becomes increasingly more focused on SDN and NFV technologies. We believe the service enablement business will play a larger role in supporting our service provider and enterprise customers to improve network service application performance in fiscal 2015 and beyond. In CCOP, optical component demand remains healthy with notable strength in Datacom, 100G modulators and China's infrastructure spend. Our Gen2 kilowatt fiber laser customer, Amada, is enthusiastic about this new generation of product along with this differentiated variable cutting head and continues to ramp the industrial metal cutting production as the industry accelerates its conversion from traditional CO2 lasers. In OSP, we have repositioned the business to focus on higher growth and higher-margin business opportunity. Looking ahead in fiscal year 2015, with robust booking from incremental anti-counterfeiting businesses, we believe OSP's revenue should return to the $50 million level by fiscal Q2, with corresponding margin improvement driven primarily by further adoption of our OVMP product for the banknote market. We’re also expanding our development efforts in consumer electronics with technologies targeting 3D sensing applications using our optical filters, as well as applications in the government and healthcare markets that can leverage our optical coding expertise. We believe the addressable end markets that JDSU serves remain on track with the blended growth rate in the mid-to high-single digit percentage range in fiscal year 2015, with typical seasonal quarterly variations. I would like to thank our employees, business partners and shareholders for your interest and continued support of JDSU. I'll turn the call over to Bill to begin the Q&A session.

Bill Ong

Management

Thank you, Tom. I’d like to ask everyone to limit discussion to one question and one follow-up. Whitney, let’s begin the question-and-answer session.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Michael Genovese with MKM Partners. Please proceed.

Michael Genovese - MKM Partners

Analyst

Great. Thanks very much. Tom, you seem to be (indiscernible) that the technology transitions have been hurting the NE business in the wireless market. Can you just squash that idea more and tell us what were you’re referring to?

Tom Waechter

Management

I think, there has been a tradition transition going on obviously in the wireless, the LTE and you got TD LTE in China et cetera. And most of our play comes once the networks are actually installed and get equipment -- subscribers across the equipment and get the capacity usage up. So that transition initially as 2G and 3G have dropped off significantly, have created a bit of a low in that spending, we normally see out in those operators.

Michael Genovese - MKM Partners

Analyst

Okay. And can you comment specifically if you’re seeing any changes recently in the level of demand in NSE related to both the major cable merger? And then secondly, the major wireless merger that people thought were going to happen and now looks like it's not going to happen in that fallout? Have you seen a recent downward revision in like 3Q because of ….

Tom Waechter

Management

No. On the cable side, our business has been real healthy. So I don’t think that up to this point we’ve really being impacted by what’s being discussed as far as the merger out there. I think on the telco side with major North American operator, we have seen some pullback as a result of both the architectural changes going on and also intended merger. So I think that has impacted the telco side of the business in North America.

Michael Genovese - MKM Partners

Analyst

Okay. Then final question for me is, looking at all your guidance here and sort of plugging it through, it look like there's a big sequential decrease in our backs and are those here more accounting related things or is that coming from some underlying cost-cutting going on?

Tom Waechter

Management

It comes from a couple of impacts, one is just basic cost controls as we’re trying to hold, OpEx down for the first quarter. And you'll see slightly lower bonus and sales commission accruals as well because it’s a lighter quarter.

Michael Genovese - MKM Partners

Analyst

Okay. But that sounds right to you that -- idea that CapEx will be down say high single -- sorry, OpEx sort of high-single digits sequentially?

Tom Waechter

Management

That’s in dollars?

Michael Genovese - MKM Partners

Analyst

Yeah.

Tom Waechter

Management

Maybe quite that much or less than that -- yeah, 5 to 10.

Michael Genovese - MKM Partners

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Tom Waechter

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Newton with Stifel. Please proceed.

Patrick Newton - Stifel

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed.

Yeah. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I guess, jumping right into the NSE business. Alan or Tom, I think you talked about your moment towards service assurance business declining in the quarter. I’m trying to get an understanding where that business stands on a annualized revenue basis? And then if we think about that from a gross margin contribution, I think the thing that was kind of surprising on your breakout of NE and SE, is that your NE business is actually above the high-end of your long-term gross margin target range, while SE is supposed to be the tailwind and should be the tailwind on a go-forward basis. So if you could give us your thoughts around what our longer-term gross margin target could be looking like?

Tom Waechter

Management

Okay. So, I think for the service enablement business or service assurance business, I should say the legacy SS7 is definitely coming off pretty rapidly now. We really haven't split out the size of that revenue. We will go down to that level but it has been a significant regional revenue level for us in the NSE business. So we’re expecting with the next generation of mobile assurance. We believe that we have a unique platform that we had now brought to market. The combination of the Trendium acquisitions and some of our other capabilities that we will see some nice growth as that starts to trend up as new architecture is required. I think as far as the gross margin levels between NE and SE, we do expect over time that the SE gross margins will be higher than NE. But we have seen a nice improvement in NE, both through mix and operational improvements. So we want to continue that moving in the right direction as well. But SE, once we are more through the initial stages of the some of those revenue recognition where we don't see the revenue but you do -- some of the cost to drop into the cost of sales, that’s causing some of that depressed level on the gross margins for SE. I would expect when we get out in time that the SE gross margins would be well above our average today, which we were at almost 66% this last quarter. I’d expect with SE would be up in the mid-70s plus range as far as gross margins as we get out pass some of this initial revenue recognition timing, et cetera.

Patrick Newton - Stifel

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed.

Okay. So I guess, we could maybe look to your Analyst Day for an updated long-term target there?

Tom Waechter

Management

We will do that, yeah, that’s what we plan for across all of our businesses with the split out of NE, SE, the other two businesses. We’re going to give you an update on our models. These models all are from about three years old now so time to update.

Patrick Newton - Stifel

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed.

Perfect. And then I guess, shifting to the fiber laser. Alan, I asked a very similar question last quarter, very nice number on that $11 million revenue for the Gen2 fiber laser. I’m curious though last time on your Gen1 you saw revenue ramp up to about $10 million a quarter on a selling basis and then the sell through, just wasn’t all that exciting. As you see here today, can you talk about how you feel about the Gen2 fiber laser ability to grow from here? And then also in the past you talked about your ability to target customers outside of Amada. Is there a chance we could see a material ramp and customers outside Amada in your fiscal 2015?

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah. I think as far as peak revenue, I don’t think we’ve seen it for sure on Gen2. The ramp and the adoption by our customer of the Gen2 has gone extremely much, much better than our Gen1 and therefore, the field deployment at their customers is going quite well and the sales guys are all excited at Amada. So I think, we’re going to continue to see growth at Amada. We’re focused on supporting them through this ramp as well as expanding our footprint within Amada, both in higher power lasers as well as different applications within Amada. So that is what our focus is for fiscal ‘15. I don't think you'll see meaningful revenue outside of Amada in ‘15.

Patrick Newton - Stifel

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Good luck.

Tom Waechter

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of James Kisner with Jefferies. Please proceed.

James Kisner - Jefferies

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed.

Thanks. I guess, I just wanted to again look at the guidance a little bit and just understand perhaps gross margin, which you’re assuming there. I mean, I’m also noting here that the optical component margin or communications margin was down quite a bit. Is that all leverage or are there some mix issues there. Could you elaborate on the strategic service margin and their performance in the quarter?

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah. Gross margin was down just slightly from Q3 on lower revenue. I have the numbers here, just a second. Gross margins were down by 40 basis points on a drop in revenue attributable to as Rex pointed out in his part of the script. Datacom dropped by one of our large Web 2.0 customers as well as the expected drop in gesture. So I don't think there's anything out of what we expected from the gross margin standpoint and outcomes. And I think, going forward, we’re expecting that to pick back up as revenue levels do increase.

James Kisner - Jefferies

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed.

Okay. So that’s going to be up a little bit. So in general, the overall gross margin could be down here, perhaps kind of 200 bps sequentially, is that a fair assumption perhaps?

Tom Waechter

Management

Maybe little bit more than that, call it a point.

James Kisner - Jefferies

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed.

Okay. And just final question, I’ll pass here. Just curious about the optical communications weakness, a little light, [bizarre] (ph) expectations. Are you guys seeing any impact here from second sourcing under the assessment of tunable XFP. I’m just curious how those products performed and what the outlook is for those? Thanks.

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah. I will give you a couple of data points, one is, our Tunable XFP revenue grew 16% quarter-on-quarter. And so, I don’t, I think, we are gaining share as a result of really and that includes our tunable SFP+ as well. So we launched our generation tunable SFP+ and that’s contributing to our growth in the tunable business. I think kind of broader base, I would say that networks are being deployed with at the core at 100 G and the spending at the service provider is really at the 100 G core deployment as oppose to new greenfield. And so, I think, directionally we saw a drop in rhodium revenue. Although, I don't think we lost substantial share with any. I will say that one of the areas of keen strength was the business of submarine cables and our growth in submarine bookings we had book-to-bill of over 3 to 1 in our submarine business and expect that to really contribute to the balance of our fiscal ‘15 growth.

James Kisner - Jefferies

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed.

Yeah. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Sue with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Thank you. Tom maybe your thoughts on just the duration of the customer a decision at the moment and the impact of the consolidation? How long things might last beyond the near-term, should we think about the fourth quarter? Should we think about lingering thoughts into the early part of next year, just a duration please?

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah. So, obviously, I’ve not given guidance out past this next quarter, but I would say, a couple of quarters is the likelihood that, I would suspect, we will no more as we could progress this next quarter, but I would expect there is couple of quarters with the change in technology and then also making plans on potential acquisition.

Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Okay. That’s helpful. And then, Tom, if we step back and look at the industry, carrier consolidation, it's usually -- it's rarely a good thing for the vendors and they consolidate, so they have more purchasing power? JDSU has been able to deflect some of the pricing pressure by higher gross margin acquisitions and lower margin pruning? As we see this big larger acquisitions on the carrier side? Are there consideration to kind of looking at business and say, we need more scale here, we need, we don’t really need to be in this business, to look it from a aggregate profit contribution point of view, so that when you look at it you say that the industry is changing, maybe the company -- should we composite its assets or to ask simply does JDSU need to be in so many businesses?

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah. It’s a question we always review and ask ourselves, I think the actual consolidation in the carrier space won’t have a huge impact on looking at the composition of our portfolio of businesses. But it does, I think give us some opportunities with this consolidation that continue move up to food chain and offer some of these higher-end solutions and that’s what we are doing. And part of the restructuring charges that you saw this quarter are really addressing some of that mix change and things we need to do to get out of certain areas and more focus into other areas that we think will benefit our future growth. So we have taken some of those charges this past quarter as we prepare for that.

Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

That's helpful. Thank you and good luck gentlemen.

Tom Waechter

Management

Thanks Mark.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Simon Leopold with Raymond James. Please proceed.

Simon Leopold - Raymond James

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed.

Great. Thank you. Just wanted to check in a couple things. One, I appreciate the new segmentation particularly around the network service enablement, it is helpful? I want to try to get a sense of the guidance of how much of this is reflective of kind of lumpiness and how much of the implied decline of the network enablement sequentially is related to consolidation versus the bigger picture trend you’ve talked about the mix shift towards the more software centric business? And as a follow-up, if you could provide some comments on the longer term, meaning calendar ‘15 and your thoughts on the 100 gig market? Thank you.

Tom Waechter

Management

Okay. David Heard, do you want to take the first part of that.

David Heard

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed.

Yeah. Sure. I think it’s a good question. So, I think, we finished Q4 in the NFV reasonably strong as carriers and especially the North American carriers. We brought in about $5 million to $7 million more than anticipated as evidence in the guidance range. I think as we look at the summer and we look at the carriers looking at how they are going to test their networks for SDN and NFV. We are seeing one particular in the U.S. that’s doing that and looking at some M&A and so the timing of that impact, I think, is just creating some choppiness in that NE market. What we have done over the last two years is really try to focus the fundamentals on where that change isn’t going to have an impact. So we've increased our investments in LTE based station test fiber, which continues to grow year-over-year and that wide broadband access. And so, I think, overall, we still see that as a $2.7 billion market that’s going to grow in that 3% to 4% range continuously and over the last year we have continued to take share in that space and in Q4 we actually have had some organic growth go as a result of our investments. To the second part of your question, I think, absolutely that 3 billion plus market that Tom reference in his prepared remarks, that’s where we see the carriers going and that’s where we see consolidation in the enterprise all moving up to stack and that's why we're putting, we are continuing to invest our R&D resources because that’s all in line with where virtualized networks are going, where software is defining the network. Did I answer your question there?

Simon Leopold - Raymond James

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed.

You did. That’s helpful. And then the other one was longer term kind of 2015, calendar ‘15 thoughts on 100 gig market particularly as metro ramps?

Alan Lowe

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed.

Yeah. This is Alan. Good question. I think we are still seeing strong demand that outstrips our capacity for what I'll call the long-haul 100 gig and we expect that to continue through calendar ’15. We do see that getting into the regional area metro probably more late calendar ‘15 as the costs and volumes need to and power consumption need to really go down to keep up with the competitive market of say our Tunable XFP. So I think from JDSU perspective on the carrier side modulators are going to continue to grow. We just transferred back in production to ACM in Asia so we are expecting to continue to grow our modulator business for 100 G. We are starting to ramp now our narrow line with laser for 100 G and we expect that to really continue to take off and then as we look at the data center market that's still predominantly 10 and 40 G and we expect 100 G, well, it’s small to grow dramatically through calendar ‘15 and ‘16 in a meaningful way the data center.

Simon Leopold - Raymond James

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Henderson with Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Alex Henderson - Needham and Company

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Thanks. Just a couple of quick clarifications, the -- I think the one comment you made was that your Datacom Web 2.0 customer had a falloff in the quarter? Are you implying that that’s the temporary one quarter thing and that Datacom Web 2.0 players are going to come back on track? I did -- I miss the context around it. I was wondering if you could clarify it?

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah. I think the main comment is that we see lumpy demand, because the nature of the build-out of the data center themselves. So we think this will be kind of a repeat pattern where we will see the lumpiness, but we don’t think the business itself is going way.

David Heard

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Yeah. And I think, what we are trying to do is to expand our footprint within those Web 2.0 customers so that the lumpiness at anyone customer is not as painful as we saw last quarter and we are making good progress on that front.

Alex Henderson - Needham and Company

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Are you expecting still growth out of the Web 2.0 players, in terms of their aggregate spending, as well as your share within it?

David Heard

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Absolutely.

Alex Henderson - Needham and Company

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Okay. And then can you outlined where you are in terms of the Arieso revenue recognition process and the PacketPortal progress metrics that you guys have been promising to talk about in terms of whether it's been included in some of the RFPs by the major network operators and where you are in getting the OEMs to sign up to carry it and similarly with the network instruments. So where are you in the integration and dilution from that?

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah. Rex will take the first part on the rev rack and David will talk about the business itself.

Rex Jackson

Management

So the timing on -- this is applies actually both to Arieso and also to a product that which include our Trendium acquisition earlier this year. Currently, we are assuming that bookings in those two areas take about three to six months to turn to initial revenue and when you get to initial revenue is recognized ratably after that. So there is not a significant inflexion that we are anticipating. Though later in this year, we’re expecting to get -- later this fiscal year, we are expecting to get to what they call VSOE on one more or products and that would contribute to greater strength in the back half of the year.

Alex Henderson - Needham and Company

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

So could you just give us some sense what we’re not recognizing in revenues that you are absorbing costs on still. I mean, there must be some scaling of this to give us some sense what it would look like?

Tom Waechter

Management

I think we’re heading -- we've got two things going on right now. The SE business which you can now see on an broken-up basis includes both the new growth opportunities we’re investing heavily in but also some legacy assurance products that are rolling off. So you’ve got -- you're basically replacing older revenue with new higher-quality revenue going forward. So our goal this year is to build a meaningful backlog and then, of course, deferred revenue on the balance sheet through this fiscal year and really hit our stride in SE in FY ‘16. There was comment in the script that we’re looking to breakeven or better on the SE business late this year, that’s still in my record.

Alex Henderson - Needham and Company

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

And then, one other question on the pricing out of China, can you talk about the magnitude of the price delta between what you're selling in other geographies and in China? And if that’s a higher rate of growth area, is there any impact on margins as a result of that shift?

Tom Waechter

Management

I’d say when there is a allocation decision to be made and 100-gigs is where we’re seeing a lot of the main growth across all regions, pricing becomes a lot more friendly. So 100-gig modulators, there’s not much if any price difference, regardless of where we sell it. And then there’s also specification differences that didn’t come into play. So I wouldn’t say there is a radical difference on those types of products. I think if you looked at pluggable product for supreme base station, that’s probably pretty ugly because there’s a lot of people competing for that business and that’s one that we’ve historically stayed away from.

Alex Henderson - Needham and Company

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Okay. Thank you.

Tom Waechter

Management

David, do you want to comment on the PacketPortal milestone?

David Heard

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Yeah. Sure. Good question Alex. I think we talked about couple milestones, one continuing to see tier 1 included in RFPs which -- that has continued in the quarter. We’ve had another tier 1 service provider, certified PacketPortal is their solution of choice going forward as they face the challenges of the SDN and NFV, I think that's great but obviously you then have to scale that. In addition to the tier 1, we also have NEM certification from our first major NEM partner. So we are progressing on those fronts and can continue to believe that that is going to be a great solution for SDN and NFV and are aiming to offset the dilution of that investment that we’ve talked about in prior periods, still by the close of our fiscal year. And those results are included in the SE results and we’ll further get through them in our Analyst Day.

Alex Henderson - Needham and Company

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Amitabh Passi with UBS. Please proceed.

Amitabh Passi - UBS

Analyst · UBS. Please proceed.

Hi. Thank you. Tom, my question again was around NSE. We had two years of declines in 2012, 2013, barely grew in 2014 and we’re starting to hear again down 10.5%. I understand the pressures in NE but even if I look at SE over the last three quarters plus the guidance, we're basically hovering around $40 million a quarter. So just trying to understand, can anything aggregate even grow in fiscal ‘15 or should we just plan for another year of declines in overall sales?

Tom Waechter

Management

No, we do plan on NSE growing. We did say that in general, the SE part. We believe the market will grow 10% to 13% and we think we’ll grow at least as well as the market. So any -- although we’re going through a period right now with North American operators, we did see demand pickup as we said in Europe and EMEA and we’re seeing some pickup in Asia. We do think that the operators will get through this period. As I mentioned, I think, it’s a couple of quarters, don’t know for sure. But that would be my best estimate right now. So we would expect somewhat around the market growth rate to be about 4% for the NE business. And again we do believe we’re taking market share there. So we should be overgrow lease with the market plus again we’re growing market share because of the additional software content for the NE products but also the combination of NE and SE, we believe positioned us very well with the operators.

Amitabh Passi - UBS

Analyst · UBS. Please proceed.

Okay. And then just a follow-up for Rex. Rex, just on the OpEx line, revenue is up 6%, 6.5% year-over-year, OpEx was up almost 13% and even if I look at it sequentially, there was basically no leverage in the model. So I’m just trying to understand some of the OpEx gyrations both in fiscal 4Q and then obviously in fiscal 1Q. Do we get to slightly more smooth trajectory?

Rex Jackson

Management

No, I think there is a couple of things going on there. Obviously, it is meaningfully year-over-year. As you look out into 2015, I think you should assume an increase in operating expenses that’s commensurate with the topline. There’s not a lot of leverage and there might be even little bit of non-leverage in the FY ‘15 outlook but they are going to be very close to each other.

Amitabh Passi - UBS

Analyst · UBS. Please proceed.

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kent Schofield with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Kent Schofield - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Thank you. Thank you for the granularity on the CCOP business around the different business lines there. Just as we think about modeling those, are there significant gross margin differences that we should keep in mind and are -- is one business more susceptible to changes around, for example, the lumpiness that you referred to in Datacom, meaning doesn’t see a bigger impact or less impact as -- again as we think about modeling those three lines?

Tom Waechter

Management

Are you talking within CCOP?

Kent Schofield - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Yeah. So I think about telecom, Datacom consumer and just kind of the gross margin differentials there and kind of lumpiness how that impacts those three lines?

Tom Waechter

Management

I think it depends a lot about, which product within each of those groups meaning no a pluggable product for radio base station where there's seven competitors, gross margins or typically much lower than 100 G modulator and both of those are in well, one in Datacom and one in telecom. But if you looked at CFP2 margins, I’d day those are higher. So as we look forward, we’re really focused on generating revenue from less than -- products less than two years old, higher than 50% to be able to continue that gross margin improvement. So I wouldn’t say that you can make a general statement about Datacom or telecom or other being radically different in gross margin. It’s the products within -- and where we have good strong products like tunable XFPs, those are margin products that are strong because of our long history of driving cost reductions and learning curve. And so I think if you through it all into blender it, it’s really hard to say. The blended rates are probably pretty, pretty equivalent.

Kent Schofield - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Okay. And then as a follow-up, can you give us an update on China in terms of how you seem to be progressing towards the $10 million to $15 million that you guys have discussed in the past?

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah, we see probably the optical components side being a little bit stronger because we roughly said $10 million of the incremental comes from optical components and about $5 million from NSE. So I think on the path, we’re on right now and where we’re seeing the spending probably a little bit healthier in optical components and probably not as quick in NSE. Although we think we are making good traction there. So I think blended, we come out about the same but it’s going to be a little bit higher mix as we go to the last part of this calendar from optical components and less than what we expected in NSE.

Kent Schofield - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Thank you.

Tom Waechter

Management

Welcome.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Dmitry Netis with William Blair. Please proceed.

Dmitry Netis - William Blair

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

Yes, thank you. On that last question, how long does this China buildout last. Do you guys have a sense of -- is this a couple of quarter scenarios or this could be kind of a few year type of buildout deployment model?

Tom Waechter

Management

Okay. It’s hard to judge but we believe it’s going to last at least through the end of the calendar year as far as the base station buildout. I would suspect with the numbers they put out there originally, it should last longer than that. But we would see a path at least through the end of calendar year. And then I think all the backbone buildout to support this base station is really just pretty early stages and that would go on longer as you start filling up capacity on the TDLT networks that drives back through the backbone. So from my perspective, it’s still in a pretty early stage. Although, they build out quite a few base stations, a smaller percentage of those have been actually turned out with volume on them. So I think there is quite a bit still to happen in China.

Dmitry Netis - William Blair

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

Great. I appreciate the color. And then, my other would be on VoLTE still kind of sticking to the wireless side. One of your direct competitor is actually talking about significant order flow, with some major operators in Asia, where are these stand on that, where is, what products do you have that target this market if any and how do you kind of take that market on.

Tom Waechter

Management

David, do you want to comment on the VoLTE market and our product alignment.

David Heard

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

Dmitry Netis - William Blair

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

And revenue for that matter, you have it, yeah.

David Heard

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

Yeah. Good question. While we are not breaking it out by solution in terms of revenue, our next-generation mobile assurance platform handles VoLTE, our base station test platform handles VoLTE, ran optimization. It's really a more delicate application that’s going across the network. And so substantial portion as we look at our mobile pipeline is people preparing the network not just for the raw capacity but delicacy of then putting VoLTE across the network. So we face up against those competitors and our players like and with others we’ve been taking share here recently. To the question on China, yeah, it's just multiyear. The Chinese are building out that network and as they have the capacity they are finding out the complexity they need. We’ve had some early design wins there in the NSE market. The China tends to be very, very late in terms of the utilization of test turn-up and optimization, that tend that get shorter and shorter as if technologies become more complex and we’re certainly there partnering with them in a multiyear build out in China.

Dmitry Netis - William Blair

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

Thank you. And then last, just a quick one on the two operator customers that you have last quarter that didn't come into revenue. Did you book these customers? I think one order was a pretty significant one around $8 million to $10 million, which was related to metro project? Did that come in this quarter or was that extended out again?

David Heard

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

So just to clarify your question there, there was a next-generation mobile assurance. We did close two Tier 1 players in Q4. As a result a very unique solution and that pipeline continues to build and it will be included again in that SE guidance. But as Rex had mentioned earlier, you're going to see, for example, we look year-over-year Q1, we expect bookings to be up quarter-over-quarter in year one, those revenues tend to then happen in the back half of the year and the early half of the year following, depending on the quarter they booked. They’re anyway from 6 to 12 months lagging.

Dmitry Netis - William Blair

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

Yeah. No. I though there was any opportunity which was a pretty significant ones, somewhere in the order of $8 million to $10 million last quarter, which didn't book or didn’t close for revenue last quarter and I was just asking if you booked it or recognized it for revenue this quarter and if not, when do you expect to get that?

David Heard

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

Yeah. I'm not sure the origin of your question. In Q3, we had some slowness in the metro market.

Dmitry Netis - William Blair

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

Yeah. That’s right.

David Heard

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

And we were able if you look at the NE numbers that Rex broke out. We were very strong in any in fact, some of the opportunity from Q1 actually pulled into Q4. And so yeah, we did see some significant strength in the NE market in Q4.

Dmitry Netis - William Blair

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

David Heard

Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed.

You’re welcome.

Tom Waechter

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Subrahmanyan with The Juda Group. Please proceed.

Subrahmanyan - The Juda Group

Analyst · The Juda Group. Please proceed.

Thank you. I have two questions, first on fourth quarter or I should say the December quarter for carrier side. You normally see some CapEx on test and I’m wondering if you expect to see a strong fourth, December quarter for test. Tom, you had mentioned, you think, there could be a couple of quarters more of the impact in these transitions. I’m just curious how you think about seasonality in December? And then also to verify kind of your comments on the mid to high single-digit growth, similar question was asked earlier but is that applicable you think to fiscal ’15 or given some of the transitions both on the carrier side and in your business side? Is that more from long-term view for market growth?

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah. I think as far as the December quarter, we do expect it to be a seasonally up quarter. So there will be that improved revenue and bookings based on seasonality. I don’t know that we can quantify that at this point. But we do believe it will be seasonally up. The comment on the mid to low single-digit growth for FY ’15, yes, we believe that we are in that range as we look out through the fiscal year, although, we’ll see some slowness in the Q1 seasonally, which is pretty normal but also on NE side, probably bit softer than usual because of the consolidation in the architectural changes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark McKechnie of Evercore. Please proceed.

Mark McKechnie - Evercore

Analyst

Oh! Great. Thanks. And thanks for the segment detail on CCOP. Just might be for Rex or even Bill, but could you give the mix between telco, Datacom and consumer for the market. I think you gave for as year ago, but trying to figure out how that telco business trended quarter-on-quarter? I think, I recall last quarter, you had a delay in 100 gig metro deployment that kind of slow things down and I want to get sense for the status of that as well? Thanks.

Tom Waechter

Management

Yeah. I think you could probably back into it because the telecom, Datacom mix was still approximately 80, 20 to give you that so it would be reasonably consistent with Q4 at least from a mix perspective I would think. Alan, do you have any other thoughts on that.

Alan Lowe

Analyst

Yeah. I mean, I think, while we saw 3-D sensing drop as expected, we did see some strength offsetting that in our industrial diode business that is in that other category. So not a big shift overall between the two. But I think apples-to-apples, not much shift between the March quarter and the June quarter on the Datacom versus Telecom.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from the line of [Raj Pal] (ph), JP Morgan. Please proceed.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks for getting me in there. Just a couple of quick questions, I guess, EMEA growth accelerated quite a bit 16% in the quarter. Do you think that that’s a sustainable growth rate? Do you think growth continues to accelerate? I just wonder if you could comment on what you think happens in EMEA over the next few quarters? And then I also wondered if you could, there seem to be a lot of misperception in the market about the linkage between optical systems and 100 gig in particular, and some of CapEx slowdown that we’re seeing in North America in the second half of year, which seems mostly linked to wireless? I wonder if you guys could comment on whether you think optical systems is infected at all by that or do we see pretty normal seasonality through the calendar year on optical systems spending in the U.S.? Thanks.

Tom Waechter

Management

I’ll take the EMEA and maybe ask David and Alan to comment on the optical systems 100 G. We do -- we think EMEA is definitely coming off the bottom and we did see that approximately 8% growth year-on-year. So we are seeing some improvement in EMEA. And more consistency, I think of the order flow, where as, if I go back to last year was very lumpy. It seem like they’re just spending, when they absolutely had to now it seems like to be in a bit more proactive in building out the technology. So, I think, its probably too early to call as the trend but from what we’re seeing, we do think, we’re going to continue to see some strengthening there in the EMEA.

David Heard

Analyst

And as far as optical systems are concerned, I think what we’re seeing is a continued deployment of upgrades of existing networks from 10 G and 40 G to 100 G, and less so the deployment of greenfield as network architecture still being sorted out. There was an interesting analysis by Ovum done about CDC architecture and flex grid stuff. And well, carriers say they wanted to deploy it. There is only a small percentage of want them deploying today, but in -- at the end of this calendar year and into calendar ’15, the majority of those surveyed said that that was the time for the network deployments of call less direction was type network. So today as mostly the transmission over existing network at 100 G.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions in queue. I’ll now turn the call back over to Mr. Bill Ong for closing remarks.

Bill Ong

Management

Thank you, Whitney. JDSU will be participating at the following Investor Related events. There are three Silicon Valley, first, was taking place at our corporate campus. MKM Fund is on August 20th, B. Riley on August 25th and RBC on August 27th. We also hosting a 2014 Analyst Day event on September 11th here at our corporate campus in Milpitas, California. We hope to see many of you here. Thank you, everyone.