NASDAQ:COMM CommScope Q2 2024 Earnings Report $4.82 -0.06 (-1.23%) As of 05/9/2025 04:00 PM Eastern Earnings HistoryForecast CommScope EPS ResultsActual EPS$0.34Consensus EPS $0.35Beat/MissMissed by -$0.01One Year Ago EPS$0.14CommScope Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$1.39 billionExpected Revenue$1.23 billionBeat/MissBeat by +$158.61 millionYoY Revenue Growth-12.70%CommScope Announcement DetailsQuarterQ2 2024Date8/8/2024TimeBefore Market OpensConference Call DateThursday, August 8, 2024Conference Call Time8:30AM ETConference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)Earnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by CommScope Q2 2024 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrAugust 8, 2024 ShareLink copied to clipboard.There are 10 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CommScope 20 24 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Massimo De Sabato, VP of Investor Relations. Operator00:00:40Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:43Good morning and thank you for joining us today to discuss CommScope's 2024 Second Quarter Results. I'm Massimo De Sabato, Vice President of Investor Relations for CommScope. And with me on today's call are Chuck Treadway, President and CEO and Kyle Lorenzen, Executive Vice President and CFO. You can find the slides that accompany this report on our Investor Relations website. Please note that some of our comments today will contain forward looking statements based on our current view of our business and actual future results may differ materially. Speaker 100:01:19Please see our recent SEC filings, which identify the principal risks and uncertainties that could affect future performance. Before I turn the call over to Chuck, I have a few housekeeping items to review. Today, we will discuss certain adjusted or non GAAP financial measures, which are described in more detail in this morning's earnings materials. Reconciliations of non GAAP financial measures and other associated disclosures are contained in our earnings materials and posted on our website. All references during today's discussion will be to our adjusted results. Speaker 100:01:55All quarterly growth rates described during today's presentation are on a year over year basis unless otherwise noted. I'll now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Chuck Treadway. Speaker 200:02:07Thank you, Massimo. Good morning, everyone. I'll begin on Slide 2. In the Q2, CommScope delivered net sales of $1,387,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA of $302,000,000 driven by strength in our CCS and OWN segments. For core CommScope, which excludes the OWN and DAS businesses, we reported net sales of $1,050,000,000 and core adjusted EBITDA of $201,000,000 for the Q2 of 2024. Speaker 200:02:37I will start my comments today addressing the recently announced deal to sell our OWN and DAS businesses to Amphenol. As we have discussed in previous calls, we have been exploring alternatives to optimize our capital structure. One of the alternatives we mentioned was asset sale. We believe that the OWN and DAS deal offers significant value at an opportune time for a strategic buyer. The deal is expected to close in the first half of twenty twenty five, giving us time to evaluate how to best manage proceeds, though we intend to use this flexibility to reduce debt and or delever through accretive investment. Speaker 200:03:17I want to thank our OWN and DAS teams for all they have done for CommScope. For our customers and employees, Amphenol represents an ideal home for these businesses' next phase of growth. Moving forward, our core business will consist of CCS, ANS and core NICS. Core NICS will now consist of Ruckus and Small Cell. Our 2nd quarter core business performance was mixed with strength in CCS and continued weakness in ANS and NICS. Speaker 200:03:47As I've mentioned in past earnings calls, we continue to control what we can. While our core revenue was down 17%, our adjusted EBITDA was essentially flat. Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of sales increased from 15.9 percent to 19.1%. This improvement has been driven by our CommScope NEXT program. We have focused on very specific initiatives in all areas of our business to enhance profitability. Speaker 200:04:15Now I'd Speaker 300:04:16like to give you Speaker 200:04:16an update on each of our businesses. In the Q2, CCS continued to improve order rates as customer inventory continues to normalize and demand has improved. Although we saw sequential order and revenue improvement in all businesses, we're experiencing stronger recovery in building and data center than in broadband. Our building and data center business is seeing very strong demand from hyperscale and cloud. The need for bandwidth and data center capacity driven by enhanced gen AI has resulted in substantial growth in this area of our business. Speaker 200:04:52We are well positioned as one of the market leaders in MPO cable and connectors. The outlook is very strong with our customers signaling robust growth in data centers over the next several years. Currently, we are assessing the demand requirement and are investing in capacity to meet that demand. In the first half of the year, we've installed capacity to drive $100,000,000 of incremental annualized revenue. These investments are highly accretive to EBITDA with returns expected in less than 6 months. Speaker 200:05:22In addition to capacity, we continue to launch new products in our building and data center business to drive additional growth. Turning our attention to broadband. We have seen orders improve sequentially from the Q1 to the 2nd quarter. Since the beginning of last year, customer inventory levels continue to improve driving increased sequential order rates. However, demand remains low relative to 2021 2022. Speaker 200:05:49Customers continue to assess their upgrades including evaluating the impact of BEAT and other federal funding programs on their build plans. Although we remain bullish on broadband, a level of uncertainty remains on the timing of a true demand recovery and the timing of BEAT. As we have previously mentioned, we are well prepared for the recovery and the BEAT program. We have ample capacity to meet the expected higher demands and we have a full suite of bottler compliant products. The latest market feedback suggests that BEAT program is now pushed to the second half of twenty twenty five. Speaker 200:06:29As we move into the second half of the year based on continued strength in building and data center, we would expect CCS revenue and adjusted EBITDA tracking closer to the 2nd quarter levels than the 1st quarter levels. Turning to core NICS, which excludes DAS. We continue to see depressed market conditions as our channel digest inventory built in the second half of twenty twenty three. Although EBITDA improved sequentially, core NEX delivered negative EBITDA in the 2nd quarter driven by lower revenue and inventory write offs. Despite challenges in the first half, we feel optimistic on a stronger second half as ruckus channel inventory has stabilized and demand is improving. Speaker 200:07:13In ruckus, we have strong visibility to channel inventory. Current inventory levels are back to what we would consider normal. In addition to normalized inventory and subsequent demand, we're gaining traction on several Ruckus initiatives including our Wi Fi 7 launch, Ruckus 1 and vertical market strategy. During the Q2, we continued to make strides in our Ruckus subscription and SaaS offerings. We remain bullish on our core NICS business. Speaker 200:07:44Finishing our core businesses with A and S. As previously mentioned, the first half of twenty twenty four was historically weak due to our customers being faced with larger than expected inventory and navigating the choices for next generation HFC architecture. Despite this, we believe the A and S segment is well positioned take advantage of the latest upgrade cycle with the breadth of new products including virtual CMTS, nodes, amplifiers, RPD and RMB modules and remote OLTs for node PON. This coupled with our legacy technology installed base allows us maximum flexibility for customer upgrades. An example of a new product development we are excited about is Unified DOCSIS 4.0 that we're developing with our silicon partner and customers. Speaker 200:08:36The Unified product will allow operators to choose ESD and or full duplex DOCSIS providing scale and flexibility. In addition, we have significant opportunities to partner with our expansive legacy installed base to quickly and effectively improve their customers' experience with only a software upgrade and modem change. Our recently commercialized DOCSIS 3.1E software upgrade allows our customers to dramatically increase their network performance. An example of a recent win was with a major Tier 1 service provider upgrading to DOCSIS 3.1e and achieving speeds of 4 gigabits per second down and 1 gigabits per second up. During the Q2, we purchased the HFC assets of Casa Systems. Speaker 200:09:29This acquisition provides us with cash flow from their legacy customer base and new products such as the virtualized CMTS and upgraded PON products. This acquisition will be deleveraging. In the short time we have owned Casa, we have had several inquiries about virtualized CCAP with Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers. In addition to the Casa acquisition, we have finalized agreements with a large Tier 1 customer on FDX products. These products will begin shipping in the second half of twenty twenty four with a significant ramp in the first half of twenty twenty five. Speaker 200:10:08The real question with our A and S business is the timing and magnitude of the upcoming upgrade cycle. Although customers have indicated a fairly aggressive upgrade cycle over the next several years, many of these upgrades appear to be pushing out. The timing and the magnitude of these upgrade cycles will be an important driver of revenue and profitability for A and S. We are continuing to navigate our business through varying market conditions. Although we are bullish medium and long term, timing and magnitude of demand improvement remains uncertain. Speaker 200:10:43For our core businesses, we believe we are well positioned to take advantage of a demand rebound with ample capacity and the right product offerings. We will continue to control what we can including supporting our customers as they navigate through their requirements. And with that, I'd like to turn things over to Kyle to talk more about our Q2 results. Speaker 400:11:05Thank you, Chuck, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with an overview of our Q2 2024 results on Slide 3. For the Q2, CommScope reported net sales of $1,387,000,000 a decrease of 13% from the prior year, driven by declines in A and S and NICS. Adjusted EBITDA of $302,000,000 increased by 20%. Adjusted EPS of $0.34 per share increased 100%. Speaker 400:11:39We experienced improved sequential revenue driven by inventory normalization and increasing demand in CCS and OWM. For Core CommScope, which excludes the OWN and DOS businesses, we reported net sales of $1,054,000,000 which declined 17% from prior year. Core adjusted EBITDA of $201,000,000 for the Q2 of 2024 was essentially flat with prior year of $202,000,000 Our adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenues increased by 320 basis points as we continue to manage what we can control including costs. Core CommScope backlog ended the quarter at $898,000,000 up versus the end of the first quarter. As mentioned previously, in all of our businesses, we are back to normalized backlog levels. Speaker 400:12:38Order rates are the direct driver of revenues. As Chuck mentioned earlier, we saw an increase in order rates from the Q1 to the Q2 2024, particularly in CCS and mix. Although this is a positive sign, we continue to lag well behind 2021 2022 revenue levels. Turning now to our Q2 highlights on Slide 4. Starting with CCS, net sales of $728,000,000 increased 5% from the prior year. Speaker 400:13:12CCS adjusted EBITDA of $171,000,000 increased 107% from the prior year, driven primarily by cost reductions and favorable product mix. TCS adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue for the quarter was 23.5 percent driven by mix, cost savings and favorable one time cost adjustments. Although we expect CCS adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue to remain strong, we would not expect it to remain at these levels in the second half. The CCS revenue increase is being driven by the building and data center business, particularly the hyperscale and cloud business. On a sequential basis, revenue was up 20%. Speaker 400:14:00Despite the pickup in order rates, these order rates still remain low relative to historical levels in 2021 2022. Although CCS order rates improved and customer conversations remain bullish on medium and long term growth, the short term demand profile still remains uncertain. Core NICS net sales of $132,000,000 decreased by 44% versus the Q2 of 2023. Core NICS adjusted EBITDA of negative $3,000,000 decreased $59,000,000 from the prior year, driven primarily by the decline in ruckus revenue and inventory write offs. As indicated, 1st quarter and second quarter revenue and adjusted EBITDA were impacted by the higher than normal channel inventory that resulted from the release of substantial product out of backlog in the second and third quarter of 2023. Speaker 400:15:03As expected, the overhang from channel inventory lasted through the first half of twenty twenty four. Toward the end of the second quarter, we saw normalization of inventory that will support improved sequential third quarter 2024 revenues. We continue to drive our Ruckus 1 and WiFi 7 initiatives. With these new products and vertical market focus, we are well positioned to take market share in the medium and long term. A and S net sales of $193,000,000 decreased 43% from the prior year due to customer inventory adjustments and upgrade delays. Speaker 400:15:45A and S adjusted EBITDA of $33,000,000 was down $30,000,000 or 47% from the prior year driven by lower revenue. The A and S market continues to be challenging as customers deal with excess inventory and delayed upgrade cycles. Although we expect to see a stronger second half of the year, this comes off a historically low first half of twenty twenty four. Our launching of FDX products should have a positive impact on the business over the next several quarters. The business remains well positioned to take advantage of upgrade cycles as we are the supplier with the largest installed base in the entire suite of products. Speaker 400:16:28Performance will be driven by the speed and magnitude of the upcoming upgrade cycle that is in early stages. Finally, during the Q2, we completed the acquisition of certain cable business assets of Casa Systems for a purchase price of $45,000,000 Finally, after the quarter closed, we announced the divestiture of our OWN and DOS businesses to Amphenol. We expect the deal to close in the first half of twenty twenty five. Net sales of these two businesses of $333,000,000 was an increase of 4% from the prior year, driven by OWN. Order rates in this segment increased in the 2nd quarter as the large service providers work through inventory and an increased spending on upgrades. Speaker 400:17:18In addition, we continue to aggressively manage costs in this segment. OWN and DOS adjusted EBITDA of $101,000,000 increased 66% from the prior year. We expect 3rd quarter OWN and DOS revenue and adjusted EBITDA to decrease compared to the Q2. As we move into the Q3, we will report these businesses as held for sale. Turning to Slide 5 for an update on cash flow. Speaker 400:17:47During the quarter, we generated cash flow from operations of $51,000,000 and adjusted free cash flow of $69,000,000 20 24 second quarter cash flow from operations declined from the prior year as a result of working capital needs. Turning to Slide 6 for an update on our liquidity and capital structure. During the Q2, our cash and liquidity remained strong. We ended the quarter with $346,000,000 in global cash and total available cash and liquidity of roughly $880,000,000 During the quarter, decreased by $11,000,000 primarily as a result of the cash paid for the Casa acquisition. We did not draw on our ABL revolver during the 2nd quarter and therefore ended the quarter with no outstanding balance. Speaker 400:18:41During the quarter, we paid the required $8,000,000 of term loan amortization. We purchased no debt on the open market. Going forward, we intend to continue to use cash opportunistically to buy back securities across the breadth of our capital structure. The company ended the quarter with net leverage ratio of 9.7, down from the prior quarter of 9.9. I'm now turning to Slide 7, where I will conclude my prepared remarks with some commentary around our expectation for the remainder of 2024. Speaker 400:19:17In our core business, we saw strong recovery in our CCS business, driven by data center, Gen AI growth. We expect that this trend will continue. Unfortunately, the core NICS and ANS segments continue to lag as the demand environment remains uncertain. Although we see some positives for second half improvements in these two businesses, we remain cautious. We would expect small sequential core revenue and adjusted EBITDA improvement in the 3rd quarter. Speaker 400:19:48Based on current visibility, Speaker 500:19:50our Speaker 400:19:51full year core adjusted EBITDA guidepost is expected to be between 700 $1,000,000 to $800,000,000 with breakeven adjusted free cash flow. We continue to control what we can control, including managing costs and supporting our customers. Our core adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue improved from 15.9% in the Q2 of 2023 to 19.1% in the Q2 of 2024. This is a testament to our priority to control what we can control and improve longer term profitability. Finally, I would like to address our capital structure. Speaker 400:20:34We continue to evaluate alternatives, including use of OWN and DOS proceeds, additional asset sales, exchanges and new financing to address the 2025 maturity and beyond. We expect to engage with our current lenders in the Q3. As previously mentioned, our credit documents are very flexible. We intend to use this flexibility as we evaluate alternatives. For today's call, we will not be making further comment with respect to our capital structure. Speaker 400:21:07However, we will provide updates as appropriate. And with that, I'd like to give the floor back to Chuck for some closing remarks. Speaker 200:21:15Thank you, Kyle. While we were generally pleased with our 2nd quarter results, specifically with the strength in CCS, uncertainty continues to remain in our other core businesses. Although off of a low base, we would expect to see continued sequential improvement in our core business in the second half of twenty twenty four. I'm encouraged by our focus on items that we control including new products, customer support and profitability. This focus positions us well for medium and long term growth. Speaker 200:21:46And with that, we'll now open the line for questions. Operator00:21:51Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. Our first question comes from Meta Marshall from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Speaker 600:22:20Great. Thanks. Maybe first question, just particularly on the data center business within CCS, just are there opportunities for share gains? Is this rising tide lifts all boats? Just how are you thinking about the growth opportunity there? Speaker 600:22:40And then maybe second question for me, with the acquisition of the Casa assets, is there Speaker 200:22:53business? Thanks. Yes. Thanks, Meta. I'd start by saying, I think we're well positioned for the data center and cloud gen AI projects. Speaker 200:23:04We've seen strong growth in this market in the first half. As we think Gen AI is going to continue to increase and the intensity of our product I think that's important to note is that we're using like 10 times more than we would use our sales or 10 times more than what we would normally sell in a normal CPU data center. And we're cautious when we Speaker 400:23:28think about how fast this is Speaker 200:23:30going to grow, we do think that it's going to be a strong market, but we're cautious in terms of the speed. We have short memories on this 'twenty two, what happened related to broadband and we're just a little bit cautious there. But we are investing in capacity and new product development in the market and we believe we have gained some share in the first half. Related to Casa acquisition, I think our customers, 1st of all, our combined customers are very pleased with the deal. Because of Casa's financial situation, some projects were paused and now we're seeing some of this free up. Speaker 200:24:10We're also seeing some good traction with virtual CMTS with our legacy customer base. It's still early, but I'd say the combination of their virtual CMTS and ours is driving interest in addition to their existing installed base that they have. Our customers are pleased that we're able to take over and provide that support. Speaker 600:24:34Great. Thank you. Operator00:24:38Thank you. Our next question comes from Samik Chatterjee from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Speaker 700:24:49Hi, thanks for taking my question. Pretty strong margins, given the revenue declines you're seeing. Maybe if you can just help us in relation to how much of the CommScope Next program has already been realized to deliver some of this EBITDA performance? And how much more sort of is there for those that you can sort of think of? Or is the scope of CommScope Next something that you can expand upon to drive more EBITDA sort of more flow through to the EBITDA given that the macro remains a bit more challenging? Speaker 200:25:24And I Speaker 700:25:24have a follow-up. Thank you. Speaker 400:25:26Yes. I mean, I think we obviously are pleased with the profitability performance of the business. I think as we've been mentioning in previous calls, we've been very focused during the downturn to generate stronger profitability on a percentage basis. I think as we think about that moving forward, I think staying at these levels is achievable. There probably is some upside, but you should also remember that during any specific quarter, there are certain things that impact that profitability like mix for example. Speaker 400:26:15I think as we think about moving forward in CommScope NEXT, I mean our CommScope NEXT initiatives are always evolving and we're coming up with new projects. I think probably the thing that Tu mentioned is we've been talking about this $100,000,000 of cost savings that we've gone in and implemented. When we think about that $100,000,000 I would say that the large majority of that $100,000,000 has been implemented and you're seeing it in the numbers now. Speaker 700:26:47Okay. Speaker 200:26:47The other thing I'd say is in terms of growth, our leads are doing a job in the businesses in terms of seeing where the market is going and developing those products for the market. And on the cost side, the general manager model is also giving a lot of business ownership where our teams are really looking at the cost, really a lot closer than you could do at a corporate level. Speaker 700:27:12Okay, got it. And just for my follow-up, Speaker 800:27:14I mean CCS Speaker 700:27:15similar sort of strong performance on margins. Are you able to comment whether the Gen AI related opportunity that you're seeing is better or sort of in line margin with the traditional opportunity with the broadband? And just a quick clarification for the guide, the 700 to 800 guidepost for the full year, what's the Q1 comparable number we should be using? We have the Q2, not sure I saw Q1 number, which we should be using in there to sort of get the implied second half? Thank Speaker 400:27:47you. Yes. Just on the Gen AI, I mean, we have we get slightly better margins on those products versus the broadband products in sort of on an average basis. And then on the Q1 guide, I mean, I think it should be in the materials, but it's 201 dollars is the comparable adjusted EBITDA. Speaker 200:28:14That's Q2. Speaker 500:28:16Q2. Speaker 400:28:17Oh, I'm sorry, dollars 92,000,000 that's Speaker 500:28:18$92,000,000 Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Speaker 300:28:21Thank you. Operator00:28:22Thank you. Our next question comes from George Notter from Jefferies. Your line is open. Speaker 900:28:33Hi guys. Thanks very much. Just continuing on the profitability strength, I think you said in the monologue that CCS had a one time favorable cost adjustment in the numbers. Could you just tell us what that was? Speaker 400:28:47This is some G and A cost and the timing of G and A. I mean it's not overly significant. It's between probably $5,000,000 $10,000,000 in the quarter. Speaker 900:28:58Got it. Okay. And were there again, I'm just looking at the EBITDA performance the business. Were there any other sort of one time favorable items that rolled through here that maybe are not recurring? I guess I'm just trying to make sure that the EBITDA strength is sustainable. Speaker 400:29:16Yes. I think as we said in the prepared remarks and a previous question, I mean, mix does drive some of that profitability. As we move forward, I think we can maintain close to these levels. I don't think in the second half we expect the profitability percentage to get considerably better. But I think if mix stays the way it is in Q2, we should be able to maintain those levels. Speaker 900:29:47Got it. Great. And then the other one I just had, could you tell us on the CCS business, could you just give us a sense for how much of that revenue mix goes to content providers or data center in general? Speaker 400:30:03Yes, about in our CCS business, about 15% of our business goes to that market. Speaker 900:30:11Great. Okay. Thank you. Operator00:30:14Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Fox from Fox Advisors. Your line is open. Speaker 500:30:26Thank you. Good morning. First of all, question on cash flows. I understand we're going to be looking at the ongoing business in terms of estimates for cash flows, but I would imagine for the next couple of quarters, you can get some cash flow off of the soon to be divested business. Is there any help on how much cash maybe we can expect off of the own and that business going for why it's part of CommScope? Speaker 400:30:52I mean, we're definitely I mean, we're not going to give you a specific number, but there's we obviously get the cash over the next few quarters between now and the close. We'll get that cash and that would be included in our cash forecast that we talked about, our guide to breakeven cash for the year. Speaker 500:31:11Okay. And then in terms of the CCS business, the conversion margins quarter over quarter are significant. Like, it looks like sales went up $123,000,000 profits went up 76,000,000 dollars Can you break out sort of what was sort of typical conversion versus mix versus just cost savings from your initiatives? And any further detail for CCS? Speaker 400:31:36I mean, on the sequential improvement, clearly the 20% increase that we had in CCS revenues, we don't see a big change in operating or period operating costs. So we get leverage on that. I think as we think about the cost side versus the margins, the mix side, I think it's there's a component of cost in it and there's a component of mix in it. I mean, we're not going to break it out, but I mean, there is a considerable amount of cost that we're managing out of the business that we've been talking about now for a few quarters. Speaker 500:32:18Maybe I can ask it one other way real quick, which is you just posted 23.5% CCS margins. Going from that level, like what's your typical conversion margin is going to be if we took the current mix of business? Speaker 400:32:37We would think that we'd be at the current mix of business, we'd expect to stay close to those margin levels. Speaker 500:32:45Okay. All right. Thank you. Operator00:32:50Thank you. Our next question comes from Simon Leopold from Raymond James. Your line is open. Speaker 300:33:12Thank you for taking the question. First, just a hopefully simple clarification. On that comment about 15% of CTS coming from cloud, I want to make sure I understand what that references. Is that hyperscale or top 10 or all data centers? Just want to make sure I understand what that 15% number means? Speaker 400:33:35That would be our data center business. Speaker 300:33:39So that's not hyperscale. Can you give us a sense of what is the hyperscale? Yes, that is. Oh, here it is. Speaker 400:33:46That's all inclusive. Speaker 300:33:48Sorry, I'm slow today. So that includes enterprise data center and the cloud? Speaker 400:33:55Correct. Speaker 300:33:57Okay. Are you able to break out what's cloud? Speaker 400:34:00No, we're not going to break that out. Operator00:34:21Our next question comes from Matt Niknam from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Speaker 800:34:27Hey guys, thanks for taking the question. 2 if I could. First on inventory digestion, if you could just help us think about where there are maybe more sizable buildups of inventory still remaining. So it sounds like CCS and OWN last quarter were maybe kind of nearing moving past some of that, but sounds like there's more of that still on the common ruckus and ANS. So just wondering if you can help us think through where you still see some bigger buildups of inventory. Speaker 800:34:58And then maybe on a somewhat related note, on the Ruckus business, can you talk to any sort of macro headwinds you're seeing there in terms of any of that impacting customer decision making? Thank you. Speaker 400:35:12I'll take the first part of it and then Chuck can take the second part. Ultimately, just I just ask the question again just so I can make sure I answer it properly. Speaker 800:35:28Yes. Where I guess across the surviving segments, where do you see bigger inventory buildup that still needs to be? Speaker 400:35:36Yes, I got it. I was just the question on the CCS. So I think as we've talked about, the A and S segment is a place that we have the inventory buildup. We definitely have built some in ruckus. So I think as we said in the prepared remarks, A and S and ruckus are sort of the two places that we have the inventory. Speaker 400:35:58And clearly, as we've talked about, as sort of that recovery pushes out, our ability to monetize that inventory becomes a little bit pushed out as well. So I think we feel like there's still some good opportunity there. But as those businesses sort of lag in the recovery, our ability to monetize just it just gets pushed out. And based on what we're seeing, that probably we're not going to make any sizable move on that until 2025. Speaker 200:36:34Yes. And just to give you a little more clarification in terms of the customer leverage, I would say the higher inventory is in A and S with A and S cable operators. I think that's where we're seeing some push out in terms of when they're doing the needing to buy more because they had more than they needed and they have to install that and then get that caught up and that's we're expecting the second half to be better than the first. On the ruckus side, we actually see the inventory in our channel actually normalized and we think we're on the right track there in terms of orders going to match what's really needed in the marketplace. In terms of headwinds, I would say customers in the market, what's going on now, I believe there's good momentum. Speaker 200:37:28I think customers are starting to get excited about our Wi Fi 7, our Ruckus 1 product and our vertical market go to market approach. So we're seeing orders pick up. I'm not seeing any macro headwinds at this point. Thank you. Operator00:37:52Thank you. Our next question comes from Simon Leopold from Raymond James. Your line is open. Speaker 300:38:02Thanks for letting me back in, got dropped there. I wanted to ask a broader question around the amplifier opportunity within ANS. There are a couple of things you had mentioned here. 1 is the development of a unified platform. Speaker 500:38:20If we Speaker 300:38:20can get a sense of the timing of an unified FDX ESD platform? And then I know this is an opportunity that seems like it's split out in time, but could you maybe help size how you see that over the long term as a revenue opportunity for specifically amplifiers for CommScope? Speaker 200:38:44Yes. So on the unified DOCSIS, we're working with the leading silicon provider there of that product. And we, I'd say, are close to having a product. We're looking for the show at the time of the show to have something, but we're working well together with the technology teams, the silicon providers and our customers to develop that product that allows customers to either use FDX or 1.8 ESD. In terms of amplifiers, we're getting very good feedback from the major players in that space whether it's an FDX amplifier or an ESD amplifier. Speaker 200:39:30And you can imagine how many amplifiers they have in the field And as they move to change that, we'll be the player there. Speaker 300:39:43Thank you. Operator00:39:46Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Chuck for closing remarks. Speaker 200:39:54Yes. Thank you for your time today. I appreciate your interest in CommScope and have a great rest of your week. Thank you. Operator00:40:03Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.Read morePowered by Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallCommScope Q2 202400:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2x Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) CommScope Earnings HeadlinesCommScope Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:COMM) Given Consensus Recommendation of "Reduce" by AnalystsMay 11 at 3:57 AM | americanbankingnews.comCommScope Holding Company, Inc. (COMM): Among the Best American Penny Stocks to Buy NowMay 10 at 8:30 AM | finance.yahoo.comHere’s How to Claim Your Stake in Elon’s Private Company, xAII predict this single breakthrough could make Elon the world’s first trillionaire — and mint more new millionaires than any tech advance in history. And for a limited time, you have the chance to claim a stake in this project, even though it’s housed inside Elon’s private company, xAI.May 11, 2025 | Brownstone Research (Ad)CommScope stockholders confirm directors and approve proposalsMay 9 at 8:32 PM | investing.comCommScope Holding (COMM) Shares Cross Above 200 DMAMay 9 at 8:32 PM | nasdaq.comCommScope Holding Company (NASDAQ:COMM) Posted Healthy Earnings But There Are Some Other Factors To Be Aware OfMay 9 at 3:31 PM | finance.yahoo.comSee More CommScope Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like CommScope? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on CommScope and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About CommScopeCommScope (NASDAQ:COMM) provides infrastructure solutions for communications, data center, and entertainment networks worldwide. The company operates through Connectivity and Cable Solutions (CCS); Outdoor Wireless Networks (OWN); Networking, Intelligent Cellular and Security Solutions (NICS), and Access Network Solutions (ANS) segments. The CCS segment provides network solutions for indoor and outdoor network applications; and fiber optic and copper connectivity and cable solutions for use in telecommunications, cable television, residential broadband networks, data centers and business enterprises. The OWN segment provides base station antennas, radio frequency filters, tower connectivity, microwave antennas, metro cell products, cabinets, steel towers, accessories, wireless Spectrum management business and Comsearch products. The NICS segment offers indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi and long-term evolution (LTE) access points, access and aggregation switches; an Internet of Things suite, on-premises and cloud-based control and management systems; and software and software-as-a-service applications. The ANS segment offers cable modem termination systems, video infrastructure, distribution and transmission equipment and cloud solutions that enable facility-based service providers to construct a state-of-the-art residential and metro distribution network. It offers its products and services through independent distributors, specialized resellers and distributors, wireless and wireline operators, original equipment manufacturers, and system integrators, as well as directly to customers. The company was formerly known as Cedar I Holding Company, Inc. and changed its name to CommScope Holding Company, Inc. in January 2011. CommScope Holding Company, Inc. was founded in 1976 and is based in Claremont, North Carolina.View CommScope ProfileRead more More Earnings Resources from MarketBeat Earnings Tools Today's Earnings Tomorrow's Earnings Next Week's Earnings Upcoming Earnings Calls Earnings Newsletter Earnings Call Transcripts Earnings Beats & Misses Corporate Guidance Earnings Screener Earnings By Country U.S. Earnings Reports Canadian Earnings Reports U.K. Earnings Reports Latest Articles Why Nearly 20 Analysts Raised Meta Price Targets Post-EarningsOXY Stock Rebound Begins Following Solid Earnings BeatMonolithic Power Systems: Will Strong Earnings Spark a Recovery?Datadog Earnings Delight: Q1 Strength and an Upbeat Forecast Upwork's Earnings Beat Fuels Stock Rally—Is Freelancing Booming?DexCom Stock: Earnings Beat and New Market Access Drive Bull CaseDisney Stock Jumps on Earnings—Is the Magic Sustainable? 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There are 10 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CommScope 20 24 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Massimo De Sabato, VP of Investor Relations. Operator00:00:40Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:43Good morning and thank you for joining us today to discuss CommScope's 2024 Second Quarter Results. I'm Massimo De Sabato, Vice President of Investor Relations for CommScope. And with me on today's call are Chuck Treadway, President and CEO and Kyle Lorenzen, Executive Vice President and CFO. You can find the slides that accompany this report on our Investor Relations website. Please note that some of our comments today will contain forward looking statements based on our current view of our business and actual future results may differ materially. Speaker 100:01:19Please see our recent SEC filings, which identify the principal risks and uncertainties that could affect future performance. Before I turn the call over to Chuck, I have a few housekeeping items to review. Today, we will discuss certain adjusted or non GAAP financial measures, which are described in more detail in this morning's earnings materials. Reconciliations of non GAAP financial measures and other associated disclosures are contained in our earnings materials and posted on our website. All references during today's discussion will be to our adjusted results. Speaker 100:01:55All quarterly growth rates described during today's presentation are on a year over year basis unless otherwise noted. I'll now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Chuck Treadway. Speaker 200:02:07Thank you, Massimo. Good morning, everyone. I'll begin on Slide 2. In the Q2, CommScope delivered net sales of $1,387,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA of $302,000,000 driven by strength in our CCS and OWN segments. For core CommScope, which excludes the OWN and DAS businesses, we reported net sales of $1,050,000,000 and core adjusted EBITDA of $201,000,000 for the Q2 of 2024. Speaker 200:02:37I will start my comments today addressing the recently announced deal to sell our OWN and DAS businesses to Amphenol. As we have discussed in previous calls, we have been exploring alternatives to optimize our capital structure. One of the alternatives we mentioned was asset sale. We believe that the OWN and DAS deal offers significant value at an opportune time for a strategic buyer. The deal is expected to close in the first half of twenty twenty five, giving us time to evaluate how to best manage proceeds, though we intend to use this flexibility to reduce debt and or delever through accretive investment. Speaker 200:03:17I want to thank our OWN and DAS teams for all they have done for CommScope. For our customers and employees, Amphenol represents an ideal home for these businesses' next phase of growth. Moving forward, our core business will consist of CCS, ANS and core NICS. Core NICS will now consist of Ruckus and Small Cell. Our 2nd quarter core business performance was mixed with strength in CCS and continued weakness in ANS and NICS. Speaker 200:03:47As I've mentioned in past earnings calls, we continue to control what we can. While our core revenue was down 17%, our adjusted EBITDA was essentially flat. Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of sales increased from 15.9 percent to 19.1%. This improvement has been driven by our CommScope NEXT program. We have focused on very specific initiatives in all areas of our business to enhance profitability. Speaker 200:04:15Now I'd Speaker 300:04:16like to give you Speaker 200:04:16an update on each of our businesses. In the Q2, CCS continued to improve order rates as customer inventory continues to normalize and demand has improved. Although we saw sequential order and revenue improvement in all businesses, we're experiencing stronger recovery in building and data center than in broadband. Our building and data center business is seeing very strong demand from hyperscale and cloud. The need for bandwidth and data center capacity driven by enhanced gen AI has resulted in substantial growth in this area of our business. Speaker 200:04:52We are well positioned as one of the market leaders in MPO cable and connectors. The outlook is very strong with our customers signaling robust growth in data centers over the next several years. Currently, we are assessing the demand requirement and are investing in capacity to meet that demand. In the first half of the year, we've installed capacity to drive $100,000,000 of incremental annualized revenue. These investments are highly accretive to EBITDA with returns expected in less than 6 months. Speaker 200:05:22In addition to capacity, we continue to launch new products in our building and data center business to drive additional growth. Turning our attention to broadband. We have seen orders improve sequentially from the Q1 to the 2nd quarter. Since the beginning of last year, customer inventory levels continue to improve driving increased sequential order rates. However, demand remains low relative to 2021 2022. Speaker 200:05:49Customers continue to assess their upgrades including evaluating the impact of BEAT and other federal funding programs on their build plans. Although we remain bullish on broadband, a level of uncertainty remains on the timing of a true demand recovery and the timing of BEAT. As we have previously mentioned, we are well prepared for the recovery and the BEAT program. We have ample capacity to meet the expected higher demands and we have a full suite of bottler compliant products. The latest market feedback suggests that BEAT program is now pushed to the second half of twenty twenty five. Speaker 200:06:29As we move into the second half of the year based on continued strength in building and data center, we would expect CCS revenue and adjusted EBITDA tracking closer to the 2nd quarter levels than the 1st quarter levels. Turning to core NICS, which excludes DAS. We continue to see depressed market conditions as our channel digest inventory built in the second half of twenty twenty three. Although EBITDA improved sequentially, core NEX delivered negative EBITDA in the 2nd quarter driven by lower revenue and inventory write offs. Despite challenges in the first half, we feel optimistic on a stronger second half as ruckus channel inventory has stabilized and demand is improving. Speaker 200:07:13In ruckus, we have strong visibility to channel inventory. Current inventory levels are back to what we would consider normal. In addition to normalized inventory and subsequent demand, we're gaining traction on several Ruckus initiatives including our Wi Fi 7 launch, Ruckus 1 and vertical market strategy. During the Q2, we continued to make strides in our Ruckus subscription and SaaS offerings. We remain bullish on our core NICS business. Speaker 200:07:44Finishing our core businesses with A and S. As previously mentioned, the first half of twenty twenty four was historically weak due to our customers being faced with larger than expected inventory and navigating the choices for next generation HFC architecture. Despite this, we believe the A and S segment is well positioned take advantage of the latest upgrade cycle with the breadth of new products including virtual CMTS, nodes, amplifiers, RPD and RMB modules and remote OLTs for node PON. This coupled with our legacy technology installed base allows us maximum flexibility for customer upgrades. An example of a new product development we are excited about is Unified DOCSIS 4.0 that we're developing with our silicon partner and customers. Speaker 200:08:36The Unified product will allow operators to choose ESD and or full duplex DOCSIS providing scale and flexibility. In addition, we have significant opportunities to partner with our expansive legacy installed base to quickly and effectively improve their customers' experience with only a software upgrade and modem change. Our recently commercialized DOCSIS 3.1E software upgrade allows our customers to dramatically increase their network performance. An example of a recent win was with a major Tier 1 service provider upgrading to DOCSIS 3.1e and achieving speeds of 4 gigabits per second down and 1 gigabits per second up. During the Q2, we purchased the HFC assets of Casa Systems. Speaker 200:09:29This acquisition provides us with cash flow from their legacy customer base and new products such as the virtualized CMTS and upgraded PON products. This acquisition will be deleveraging. In the short time we have owned Casa, we have had several inquiries about virtualized CCAP with Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers. In addition to the Casa acquisition, we have finalized agreements with a large Tier 1 customer on FDX products. These products will begin shipping in the second half of twenty twenty four with a significant ramp in the first half of twenty twenty five. Speaker 200:10:08The real question with our A and S business is the timing and magnitude of the upcoming upgrade cycle. Although customers have indicated a fairly aggressive upgrade cycle over the next several years, many of these upgrades appear to be pushing out. The timing and the magnitude of these upgrade cycles will be an important driver of revenue and profitability for A and S. We are continuing to navigate our business through varying market conditions. Although we are bullish medium and long term, timing and magnitude of demand improvement remains uncertain. Speaker 200:10:43For our core businesses, we believe we are well positioned to take advantage of a demand rebound with ample capacity and the right product offerings. We will continue to control what we can including supporting our customers as they navigate through their requirements. And with that, I'd like to turn things over to Kyle to talk more about our Q2 results. Speaker 400:11:05Thank you, Chuck, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with an overview of our Q2 2024 results on Slide 3. For the Q2, CommScope reported net sales of $1,387,000,000 a decrease of 13% from the prior year, driven by declines in A and S and NICS. Adjusted EBITDA of $302,000,000 increased by 20%. Adjusted EPS of $0.34 per share increased 100%. Speaker 400:11:39We experienced improved sequential revenue driven by inventory normalization and increasing demand in CCS and OWM. For Core CommScope, which excludes the OWN and DOS businesses, we reported net sales of $1,054,000,000 which declined 17% from prior year. Core adjusted EBITDA of $201,000,000 for the Q2 of 2024 was essentially flat with prior year of $202,000,000 Our adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenues increased by 320 basis points as we continue to manage what we can control including costs. Core CommScope backlog ended the quarter at $898,000,000 up versus the end of the first quarter. As mentioned previously, in all of our businesses, we are back to normalized backlog levels. Speaker 400:12:38Order rates are the direct driver of revenues. As Chuck mentioned earlier, we saw an increase in order rates from the Q1 to the Q2 2024, particularly in CCS and mix. Although this is a positive sign, we continue to lag well behind 2021 2022 revenue levels. Turning now to our Q2 highlights on Slide 4. Starting with CCS, net sales of $728,000,000 increased 5% from the prior year. Speaker 400:13:12CCS adjusted EBITDA of $171,000,000 increased 107% from the prior year, driven primarily by cost reductions and favorable product mix. TCS adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue for the quarter was 23.5 percent driven by mix, cost savings and favorable one time cost adjustments. Although we expect CCS adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue to remain strong, we would not expect it to remain at these levels in the second half. The CCS revenue increase is being driven by the building and data center business, particularly the hyperscale and cloud business. On a sequential basis, revenue was up 20%. Speaker 400:14:00Despite the pickup in order rates, these order rates still remain low relative to historical levels in 2021 2022. Although CCS order rates improved and customer conversations remain bullish on medium and long term growth, the short term demand profile still remains uncertain. Core NICS net sales of $132,000,000 decreased by 44% versus the Q2 of 2023. Core NICS adjusted EBITDA of negative $3,000,000 decreased $59,000,000 from the prior year, driven primarily by the decline in ruckus revenue and inventory write offs. As indicated, 1st quarter and second quarter revenue and adjusted EBITDA were impacted by the higher than normal channel inventory that resulted from the release of substantial product out of backlog in the second and third quarter of 2023. Speaker 400:15:03As expected, the overhang from channel inventory lasted through the first half of twenty twenty four. Toward the end of the second quarter, we saw normalization of inventory that will support improved sequential third quarter 2024 revenues. We continue to drive our Ruckus 1 and WiFi 7 initiatives. With these new products and vertical market focus, we are well positioned to take market share in the medium and long term. A and S net sales of $193,000,000 decreased 43% from the prior year due to customer inventory adjustments and upgrade delays. Speaker 400:15:45A and S adjusted EBITDA of $33,000,000 was down $30,000,000 or 47% from the prior year driven by lower revenue. The A and S market continues to be challenging as customers deal with excess inventory and delayed upgrade cycles. Although we expect to see a stronger second half of the year, this comes off a historically low first half of twenty twenty four. Our launching of FDX products should have a positive impact on the business over the next several quarters. The business remains well positioned to take advantage of upgrade cycles as we are the supplier with the largest installed base in the entire suite of products. Speaker 400:16:28Performance will be driven by the speed and magnitude of the upcoming upgrade cycle that is in early stages. Finally, during the Q2, we completed the acquisition of certain cable business assets of Casa Systems for a purchase price of $45,000,000 Finally, after the quarter closed, we announced the divestiture of our OWN and DOS businesses to Amphenol. We expect the deal to close in the first half of twenty twenty five. Net sales of these two businesses of $333,000,000 was an increase of 4% from the prior year, driven by OWN. Order rates in this segment increased in the 2nd quarter as the large service providers work through inventory and an increased spending on upgrades. Speaker 400:17:18In addition, we continue to aggressively manage costs in this segment. OWN and DOS adjusted EBITDA of $101,000,000 increased 66% from the prior year. We expect 3rd quarter OWN and DOS revenue and adjusted EBITDA to decrease compared to the Q2. As we move into the Q3, we will report these businesses as held for sale. Turning to Slide 5 for an update on cash flow. Speaker 400:17:47During the quarter, we generated cash flow from operations of $51,000,000 and adjusted free cash flow of $69,000,000 20 24 second quarter cash flow from operations declined from the prior year as a result of working capital needs. Turning to Slide 6 for an update on our liquidity and capital structure. During the Q2, our cash and liquidity remained strong. We ended the quarter with $346,000,000 in global cash and total available cash and liquidity of roughly $880,000,000 During the quarter, decreased by $11,000,000 primarily as a result of the cash paid for the Casa acquisition. We did not draw on our ABL revolver during the 2nd quarter and therefore ended the quarter with no outstanding balance. Speaker 400:18:41During the quarter, we paid the required $8,000,000 of term loan amortization. We purchased no debt on the open market. Going forward, we intend to continue to use cash opportunistically to buy back securities across the breadth of our capital structure. The company ended the quarter with net leverage ratio of 9.7, down from the prior quarter of 9.9. I'm now turning to Slide 7, where I will conclude my prepared remarks with some commentary around our expectation for the remainder of 2024. Speaker 400:19:17In our core business, we saw strong recovery in our CCS business, driven by data center, Gen AI growth. We expect that this trend will continue. Unfortunately, the core NICS and ANS segments continue to lag as the demand environment remains uncertain. Although we see some positives for second half improvements in these two businesses, we remain cautious. We would expect small sequential core revenue and adjusted EBITDA improvement in the 3rd quarter. Speaker 400:19:48Based on current visibility, Speaker 500:19:50our Speaker 400:19:51full year core adjusted EBITDA guidepost is expected to be between 700 $1,000,000 to $800,000,000 with breakeven adjusted free cash flow. We continue to control what we can control, including managing costs and supporting our customers. Our core adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue improved from 15.9% in the Q2 of 2023 to 19.1% in the Q2 of 2024. This is a testament to our priority to control what we can control and improve longer term profitability. Finally, I would like to address our capital structure. Speaker 400:20:34We continue to evaluate alternatives, including use of OWN and DOS proceeds, additional asset sales, exchanges and new financing to address the 2025 maturity and beyond. We expect to engage with our current lenders in the Q3. As previously mentioned, our credit documents are very flexible. We intend to use this flexibility as we evaluate alternatives. For today's call, we will not be making further comment with respect to our capital structure. Speaker 400:21:07However, we will provide updates as appropriate. And with that, I'd like to give the floor back to Chuck for some closing remarks. Speaker 200:21:15Thank you, Kyle. While we were generally pleased with our 2nd quarter results, specifically with the strength in CCS, uncertainty continues to remain in our other core businesses. Although off of a low base, we would expect to see continued sequential improvement in our core business in the second half of twenty twenty four. I'm encouraged by our focus on items that we control including new products, customer support and profitability. This focus positions us well for medium and long term growth. Speaker 200:21:46And with that, we'll now open the line for questions. Operator00:21:51Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. Our first question comes from Meta Marshall from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Speaker 600:22:20Great. Thanks. Maybe first question, just particularly on the data center business within CCS, just are there opportunities for share gains? Is this rising tide lifts all boats? Just how are you thinking about the growth opportunity there? Speaker 600:22:40And then maybe second question for me, with the acquisition of the Casa assets, is there Speaker 200:22:53business? Thanks. Yes. Thanks, Meta. I'd start by saying, I think we're well positioned for the data center and cloud gen AI projects. Speaker 200:23:04We've seen strong growth in this market in the first half. As we think Gen AI is going to continue to increase and the intensity of our product I think that's important to note is that we're using like 10 times more than we would use our sales or 10 times more than what we would normally sell in a normal CPU data center. And we're cautious when we Speaker 400:23:28think about how fast this is Speaker 200:23:30going to grow, we do think that it's going to be a strong market, but we're cautious in terms of the speed. We have short memories on this 'twenty two, what happened related to broadband and we're just a little bit cautious there. But we are investing in capacity and new product development in the market and we believe we have gained some share in the first half. Related to Casa acquisition, I think our customers, 1st of all, our combined customers are very pleased with the deal. Because of Casa's financial situation, some projects were paused and now we're seeing some of this free up. Speaker 200:24:10We're also seeing some good traction with virtual CMTS with our legacy customer base. It's still early, but I'd say the combination of their virtual CMTS and ours is driving interest in addition to their existing installed base that they have. Our customers are pleased that we're able to take over and provide that support. Speaker 600:24:34Great. Thank you. Operator00:24:38Thank you. Our next question comes from Samik Chatterjee from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Speaker 700:24:49Hi, thanks for taking my question. Pretty strong margins, given the revenue declines you're seeing. Maybe if you can just help us in relation to how much of the CommScope Next program has already been realized to deliver some of this EBITDA performance? And how much more sort of is there for those that you can sort of think of? Or is the scope of CommScope Next something that you can expand upon to drive more EBITDA sort of more flow through to the EBITDA given that the macro remains a bit more challenging? Speaker 200:25:24And I Speaker 700:25:24have a follow-up. Thank you. Speaker 400:25:26Yes. I mean, I think we obviously are pleased with the profitability performance of the business. I think as we've been mentioning in previous calls, we've been very focused during the downturn to generate stronger profitability on a percentage basis. I think as we think about that moving forward, I think staying at these levels is achievable. There probably is some upside, but you should also remember that during any specific quarter, there are certain things that impact that profitability like mix for example. Speaker 400:26:15I think as we think about moving forward in CommScope NEXT, I mean our CommScope NEXT initiatives are always evolving and we're coming up with new projects. I think probably the thing that Tu mentioned is we've been talking about this $100,000,000 of cost savings that we've gone in and implemented. When we think about that $100,000,000 I would say that the large majority of that $100,000,000 has been implemented and you're seeing it in the numbers now. Speaker 700:26:47Okay. Speaker 200:26:47The other thing I'd say is in terms of growth, our leads are doing a job in the businesses in terms of seeing where the market is going and developing those products for the market. And on the cost side, the general manager model is also giving a lot of business ownership where our teams are really looking at the cost, really a lot closer than you could do at a corporate level. Speaker 700:27:12Okay, got it. And just for my follow-up, Speaker 800:27:14I mean CCS Speaker 700:27:15similar sort of strong performance on margins. Are you able to comment whether the Gen AI related opportunity that you're seeing is better or sort of in line margin with the traditional opportunity with the broadband? And just a quick clarification for the guide, the 700 to 800 guidepost for the full year, what's the Q1 comparable number we should be using? We have the Q2, not sure I saw Q1 number, which we should be using in there to sort of get the implied second half? Thank Speaker 400:27:47you. Yes. Just on the Gen AI, I mean, we have we get slightly better margins on those products versus the broadband products in sort of on an average basis. And then on the Q1 guide, I mean, I think it should be in the materials, but it's 201 dollars is the comparable adjusted EBITDA. Speaker 200:28:14That's Q2. Speaker 500:28:16Q2. Speaker 400:28:17Oh, I'm sorry, dollars 92,000,000 that's Speaker 500:28:18$92,000,000 Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Speaker 300:28:21Thank you. Operator00:28:22Thank you. Our next question comes from George Notter from Jefferies. Your line is open. Speaker 900:28:33Hi guys. Thanks very much. Just continuing on the profitability strength, I think you said in the monologue that CCS had a one time favorable cost adjustment in the numbers. Could you just tell us what that was? Speaker 400:28:47This is some G and A cost and the timing of G and A. I mean it's not overly significant. It's between probably $5,000,000 $10,000,000 in the quarter. Speaker 900:28:58Got it. Okay. And were there again, I'm just looking at the EBITDA performance the business. Were there any other sort of one time favorable items that rolled through here that maybe are not recurring? I guess I'm just trying to make sure that the EBITDA strength is sustainable. Speaker 400:29:16Yes. I think as we said in the prepared remarks and a previous question, I mean, mix does drive some of that profitability. As we move forward, I think we can maintain close to these levels. I don't think in the second half we expect the profitability percentage to get considerably better. But I think if mix stays the way it is in Q2, we should be able to maintain those levels. Speaker 900:29:47Got it. Great. And then the other one I just had, could you tell us on the CCS business, could you just give us a sense for how much of that revenue mix goes to content providers or data center in general? Speaker 400:30:03Yes, about in our CCS business, about 15% of our business goes to that market. Speaker 900:30:11Great. Okay. Thank you. Operator00:30:14Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Fox from Fox Advisors. Your line is open. Speaker 500:30:26Thank you. Good morning. First of all, question on cash flows. I understand we're going to be looking at the ongoing business in terms of estimates for cash flows, but I would imagine for the next couple of quarters, you can get some cash flow off of the soon to be divested business. Is there any help on how much cash maybe we can expect off of the own and that business going for why it's part of CommScope? Speaker 400:30:52I mean, we're definitely I mean, we're not going to give you a specific number, but there's we obviously get the cash over the next few quarters between now and the close. We'll get that cash and that would be included in our cash forecast that we talked about, our guide to breakeven cash for the year. Speaker 500:31:11Okay. And then in terms of the CCS business, the conversion margins quarter over quarter are significant. Like, it looks like sales went up $123,000,000 profits went up 76,000,000 dollars Can you break out sort of what was sort of typical conversion versus mix versus just cost savings from your initiatives? And any further detail for CCS? Speaker 400:31:36I mean, on the sequential improvement, clearly the 20% increase that we had in CCS revenues, we don't see a big change in operating or period operating costs. So we get leverage on that. I think as we think about the cost side versus the margins, the mix side, I think it's there's a component of cost in it and there's a component of mix in it. I mean, we're not going to break it out, but I mean, there is a considerable amount of cost that we're managing out of the business that we've been talking about now for a few quarters. Speaker 500:32:18Maybe I can ask it one other way real quick, which is you just posted 23.5% CCS margins. Going from that level, like what's your typical conversion margin is going to be if we took the current mix of business? Speaker 400:32:37We would think that we'd be at the current mix of business, we'd expect to stay close to those margin levels. Speaker 500:32:45Okay. All right. Thank you. Operator00:32:50Thank you. Our next question comes from Simon Leopold from Raymond James. Your line is open. Speaker 300:33:12Thank you for taking the question. First, just a hopefully simple clarification. On that comment about 15% of CTS coming from cloud, I want to make sure I understand what that references. Is that hyperscale or top 10 or all data centers? Just want to make sure I understand what that 15% number means? Speaker 400:33:35That would be our data center business. Speaker 300:33:39So that's not hyperscale. Can you give us a sense of what is the hyperscale? Yes, that is. Oh, here it is. Speaker 400:33:46That's all inclusive. Speaker 300:33:48Sorry, I'm slow today. So that includes enterprise data center and the cloud? Speaker 400:33:55Correct. Speaker 300:33:57Okay. Are you able to break out what's cloud? Speaker 400:34:00No, we're not going to break that out. Operator00:34:21Our next question comes from Matt Niknam from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Speaker 800:34:27Hey guys, thanks for taking the question. 2 if I could. First on inventory digestion, if you could just help us think about where there are maybe more sizable buildups of inventory still remaining. So it sounds like CCS and OWN last quarter were maybe kind of nearing moving past some of that, but sounds like there's more of that still on the common ruckus and ANS. So just wondering if you can help us think through where you still see some bigger buildups of inventory. Speaker 800:34:58And then maybe on a somewhat related note, on the Ruckus business, can you talk to any sort of macro headwinds you're seeing there in terms of any of that impacting customer decision making? Thank you. Speaker 400:35:12I'll take the first part of it and then Chuck can take the second part. Ultimately, just I just ask the question again just so I can make sure I answer it properly. Speaker 800:35:28Yes. Where I guess across the surviving segments, where do you see bigger inventory buildup that still needs to be? Speaker 400:35:36Yes, I got it. I was just the question on the CCS. So I think as we've talked about, the A and S segment is a place that we have the inventory buildup. We definitely have built some in ruckus. So I think as we said in the prepared remarks, A and S and ruckus are sort of the two places that we have the inventory. Speaker 400:35:58And clearly, as we've talked about, as sort of that recovery pushes out, our ability to monetize that inventory becomes a little bit pushed out as well. So I think we feel like there's still some good opportunity there. But as those businesses sort of lag in the recovery, our ability to monetize just it just gets pushed out. And based on what we're seeing, that probably we're not going to make any sizable move on that until 2025. Speaker 200:36:34Yes. And just to give you a little more clarification in terms of the customer leverage, I would say the higher inventory is in A and S with A and S cable operators. I think that's where we're seeing some push out in terms of when they're doing the needing to buy more because they had more than they needed and they have to install that and then get that caught up and that's we're expecting the second half to be better than the first. On the ruckus side, we actually see the inventory in our channel actually normalized and we think we're on the right track there in terms of orders going to match what's really needed in the marketplace. In terms of headwinds, I would say customers in the market, what's going on now, I believe there's good momentum. Speaker 200:37:28I think customers are starting to get excited about our Wi Fi 7, our Ruckus 1 product and our vertical market go to market approach. So we're seeing orders pick up. I'm not seeing any macro headwinds at this point. Thank you. Operator00:37:52Thank you. Our next question comes from Simon Leopold from Raymond James. Your line is open. Speaker 300:38:02Thanks for letting me back in, got dropped there. I wanted to ask a broader question around the amplifier opportunity within ANS. There are a couple of things you had mentioned here. 1 is the development of a unified platform. Speaker 500:38:20If we Speaker 300:38:20can get a sense of the timing of an unified FDX ESD platform? And then I know this is an opportunity that seems like it's split out in time, but could you maybe help size how you see that over the long term as a revenue opportunity for specifically amplifiers for CommScope? Speaker 200:38:44Yes. So on the unified DOCSIS, we're working with the leading silicon provider there of that product. And we, I'd say, are close to having a product. We're looking for the show at the time of the show to have something, but we're working well together with the technology teams, the silicon providers and our customers to develop that product that allows customers to either use FDX or 1.8 ESD. In terms of amplifiers, we're getting very good feedback from the major players in that space whether it's an FDX amplifier or an ESD amplifier. Speaker 200:39:30And you can imagine how many amplifiers they have in the field And as they move to change that, we'll be the player there. Speaker 300:39:43Thank you. Operator00:39:46Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Chuck for closing remarks. Speaker 200:39:54Yes. Thank you for your time today. I appreciate your interest in CommScope and have a great rest of your week. Thank you. Operator00:40:03Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.Read morePowered by