Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Plover Bay Technologies Limited annual results conference call for financial year 2022. Today's presenter will be Alex, chairman and founder of Plover Bay, and myself, Chris, CFO of the company. Before we start the presentation, monetary figures discussed in this call will be in US dollars unless otherwise stated. Our results have been published, you can find it on the HKEXn ews website. We also published our presentation slides, you can find it on our website at ploverbay.com. I will now start with the financial recap, then Alex will go through our business updates, outlook, and strategies. After that, we will start the Q&A. Let me start now, I shall share with you the summary of our financials in 2022.
In 2022, our revenue increased by 17% year-on-year to $86.8 million. Our gross profit increased by 8% year-on-year to $46.5 million. Operating expenses increased 9% year-on-year to $20.1 million. Our net profit increased 7% year-on-year to $22.7 million. During the year, our gross margin dropped 4.6 percentage points to 53.6%, while our net profit margin dropped 2.5% to 26.1%. Our diluted EPS was $0.0206 per share, which increased 6% year-over-year. More on revenue. Overall, our revenue increased 17% to $86.8 million, of which wireless SD-WAN segment increased 10%, accounting for 54% of our total sales. Wired SD-WAN segment increased 16%, which accounts for 17% of our total sales.
Warranty and support services segment increased 34% year-on-year, which accounts for 24% of the total. Software licenses increased 32% year-on-year, making up 5% of our total revenue. As you can see, this year our fastest-growing segments are the ones related to recurring revenue, which I will go through later. In general, we saw encouraging growth in terms of number of devices under a subscription and the actual subscription booking dollar amount that we received. Also sales from our 5G LTE data services. Later on, I will share more on the numbers for these. On wired and wireless router sales, we see strong growth in 5G routers, small enterprise routers and supporting products such as long-range wireless antennas.
Part of the growth in these products was offset by platform migration among our LTE products, because many key components used by these older products have been discontinued by our suppliers during the semiconductor shortages. We had to develop new platforms to continue these products. During the migration period, you know, transition period, this has affected the sales of these product lines. Geographically, sales to North America increased 21% year-over-year, mainly driven by strong growth in recurring revenues and 5G routers. Sales to EMEA region increased 11% year-over-year, driven by strong growth in 5G routers and long-range antennas. Sales to Asia market rose 19%. Particularly, we saw strong growth in Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia, offset by declines in Singapore and Thailand.
In other regions, which is mostly Australia, sales decreased by 9%. We believe this is due to general project timing and to a certain extent, the unfavorable exchange rates. Next to recurring revenue. Recurring revenue, which includes warranty and support services segment and some recurring subscriptions, booked in software licenses segment, in total increased 37% year-on-year to $23.8 million. Recurring revenue now accounts for 27% of total revenue. During the year, we have developed new features of our cloud platforms, such as InTouch, which enables IT operations to remotely manage third-party devices such as cameras, you know, IoT sensors behind our routers, without any specialized equipment and remote PC software. We also bundled even more software features into our subscription packages to increase their value proposition to our customers.
We believe these efforts have helped drive more people to keep or renew their subscriptions. For example, we see the number of devices under a subscription at the end of 2022 has increased 33% year-on-year. Second, the dollar amounts we received from customers buying subscriptions increased by 49% year-on-year. On top of that, part of our recurring revenue includes sales of LTE data, and this service was launched in 2021. Revenue from this part has been ramping up nicely and now exceeded 1% of our total revenue in 2022. Worthwhile to mention is that this 5G LTE data service is now built into our, all of our new hardware platforms.
We believe when the installed base of these new devices come to a certain level, it will be very positive to our data service revenue growth. Let's move on to gross margins. Our gross margin declined to 53.6% this year, down 4.6 percentage points. You can see that second wise, wired and wireless routers margins have both declined quite a bit. This is mainly because of the fact that we are keeping our prices at competitive levels despite component cost increases. We do this because, again, we would like to boost our installed base in order to accelerate future subscription growth. Next, operating expenses and net margin. During the year, our revenue increased 17% year-on-year, while OPEX increased 9% year-on-year. We continue to see operating leverage in our business.
While our reported net margin was 26%, if we exclude the impact of $1.7 million foreign exchange loss, our net margin would have been 28%, which would still be in the high range compared to previous years. Overall, even though our gross margin declined, our net margin remains relatively stable. This is what we have been saying in the past, that our lean operating structure enables us to be very competitive in the market in order to grow our installed base. Lastly, I'll mention our inventory has increased quite a bit to $32 million. Inventory days have increased to 231 days from 183 days in previous year.
While some people may find this alarming, we want to ensure that we can continue to capture large opportunities to help accelerate our revenue, recurring revenue growth. Our inventory numbers reflect this current strategy. I would like to hand the call over to Alex.
Thank you, Chris. Basically, I would like to recall the fundamental of our business. Okay, we all know is these days is connectivity are super important. That is we all have an expect, we all have a common expectations on connectivity. It should be simple, it should be always work, it should be cost-effective, and it should be there whenever it's needed. However, we all know is that the reality is something quite different, because now is in order to. For example, in order to connect to a mobile network, you have to go to get a SIM card. You gotta get a router. With that mobile router, you in some countries, it needs to be certified by the operator.
That is also you need to activate a SIM in order to get this connected. The same time is, so for certain areas, the fixed lines, they cannot be reached anywhere. Mobile is not always reliable because there may be coverage issue, or there may be fair usage policy issues, or there may be SIM card activation issues. It's actually still a quite complicated situation. The same time is, so when you, when you're connecting to a Mobile Network Operator, so they usually require you to have a contract with them for years. That means is if you have a situation you only want to have connectivity for two weeks. That might not be available. It is a quite a complicated process.
In the past, I think is a lot of investors in, they interpret our business as pretty much like a hardware business. We can understand that because, so we have our routers. And I want to emphasize again is, in fact, is what we deliver is, it's not just a hardware. We have created the ecosystem that comprise of these purpose-designed speedboost routers. These speedboost routers is not a general purpose routers. In fact, SpeedFusion is our proprietary technology. This is a proprietary patent technology to do bonding, to put multiple carriers, multiple networks together. In general, so that means we can connect, for example, fiber broadband together with a 5G connection, and we put these two links together.
We have a big purpose-designed distribution routers. At the same time is that we have the connectivity software and the cloud services. The objective is to make things simple. Well, because in order to make a connection reliable, you need to have an hand devices, you, and you need to have a client devices, you need to put them together. Most people, they do not prefer to have something like that. It is a bit complicated. That's why we have created a bundle of cloud services in order to simplify all these things. At the same time is, so, we have a team of passion-driven go-to-market partners. These are not the general resellers. These guys are actually, they are our users.
They are our customers. They have been using our products before. At the same time is they apply this product, our technology, into their business. These guys, as you can see, they actively participate in our customer forums, sharing the feedbacks, including the goods and the bads about their experiences with us. This approach is actually very efficient. Because we directly talk to the customers, the people who are using our products. At the same time is, most of the time is these community members, they're helping each other to solve technical problems, to share application examples. At the same time is, they give us tremendous insights about what needs to be built for the market. This is actually the foundation of the Peplink ecosystem.
At the same time is, we are seeing the source of connectivity. It's getting a pretty wide range these days. Every country we can, we can have multiple fiber operators, different ISPs, offering online services. At the same time is usually there are a couple of our operators, mobile network operators. They're offering us a very competitively priced consumer 5G plans, LTE plans. Also is there's an emerging areas, which is the private 5G, private LTE. Of course, the Low Earth Orbit satellites, for example, is just like Starlink and OneWeb. This is. That we have these multiple source of connectivity. Then is also what we really create the value is supercharging this connectivity. Because today, most of the time is these connections are just one single connection.
That means is somebody or who already has a fiber broadband, they might feel, "Okay, I have a fiber broadband, that is good enough." With our ecosystem, with our products and the services, we are actually enabling multiple sources of connectivity by supercharging the broadband, supercharging the Wi-Fi, by adding multiple sources of connectivity together. The benefit is actually to meet us, because now people get a faster broadband, and then we are seeing this supercharging connectivity can be applied to various industries, various vertical markets. If we look into the levels of complexity or the level of the requirements. You can see is the...
Some applications, for example, maybe is the work from home thing or the bus transportation thing. People are looking primarily for wireless broadband. They just need a wireless connection, because in these applications, you cannot simply connect that to a wired line. Is also for home offices, retail shops, small offices. Yes, they are able to access the fiber broadband. At the same time, people are looking for better connectivity because they do not want their POS to be unable to handle the transactions, or they do not want applications to be jammed because of a single connection. People are looking for better connectivity. At the same time, banks or construction sites or the large events.
For them, the connectivity is an essential one because they cannot lose a second of outage in these situations. If we're talking about the public safety market, the telemedicine market, the broadcasting market. This is even much more severe. Like the cruise boat market. This is actually mission critical. This is actually as important as power sources. You know, in a hospital, you cannot afford a single second of power outage. For the same reason, they cannot afford a single second of outage for the connectivity. This is a mission-critical connectivity.
What we do is we do supercharge all these connectivities, even though they have different levels of importance. Basically is that is the foundation of our business. Again, we are not selling a Wi-Fi router. We are not selling a SD-WAN router. We are not just selling a router, a switch and things like this. There are tons of products like this in the market, but we put all these things together, including the cloud services, such that people are experiencing a supercharging experience. Now you do not need to deal with multiple operators to get all these multiple source of connections together. Recently is we have actually pretty encouraging example.
One of the world's largest cruise boat operators, they are using Starlink to improve the onboard experience for their guests and crews, such that they can have a really good broadband speed in the ocean on the cruise boat. They are using actually the Peplink ecosystems, including our routers, antennas, outdoor Wi-Fi and everything. This is also, actually, without a really passionate partner, we won't be able to get this done in such a soft speed. Basically, we receive email inquiry from the end customers. They are telling us is that they are interested to test out with our technology because they have a problem to solve. We pass this actually to our very passion reseller partners.
That guy he just jumped on the plane the next morning, going to see the customer. He's bringing along with our products to have a trial with the customer, to show how it works. The customer is super impressed with the situation. He's telling us, "Okay, guys, we are going to give you two boats to try it out. Let's see if this is really working as expected." In a very, in a very short period of time, it's just a couple of weeks, our partners are able to connect all these Starlinks over to with these two boats.
We deliver a tremendous result. The customers are so happy that they have a standardized the whole solution together with us. The implication of this showcase is actually we improve Starlink in large deployments. I guess in our previous calls we have investors asking us, "Hey, is Starlink going to be an alternative technology to 5G? Is that going to compete with what we have? Is that going to make SpeedFusion obsolete?" This example is a perfect example that. No, that is not the case. In fact, even the 6G or whatever, is that going to replace the technology? No. Because if we look into this from a different angle, people are not looking at speed only. People are looking for reliability.
People are looking for a better connectivity which they can not be done with one single technology. The mix-and-match technology works really well. However, the mix-and-match technology, if you're doing that by yourself or if you're going to do this with SD-WAN. That is a complicated process, because you need to go to connect to different operators. You need to find a product that is certified with all these operators. You need to get all these things integrated together. That is during the process, people might pinpointing or finger-pointing each other, and all these kind of things that is creating friction. At the same time is, maybe the customer is only needing this kind of connectivity for three weeks.
Maybe in situations like that, you do not want to spend two months' time in order to get a three weeks connection working. At the same time is you do not want to engage with a contract like that. That is actually the foundation of what we believe we are creating a new segment. We are creating a very interesting industry. In our case study is, this is where a branch would have deployment in Malaysia for fast food chain. Again, is these are parties fast food chain, is that they just need for a better connectivity. The reason why is today all these POS are cloud-based. As a sole, the phones are Voice over IP. Everything in this branch are digital, together with the digital signage and everything.
They need to be reliably connected. Again, is when you are deploying thousands of branches in the country. Different areas have different connectivity challenges. Maybe in some area, there's a coverage issue with the landline. Maybe in some areas, the broadband is just not fast enough, or the upload speed is not fast enough or not reliable enough. Maybe is during rainy days in some locations that is not reliable at all. Again, is the customers are deploying our supercharged connectivity solution for better connectivity. You can tell the SpeedFusion thing is the technology behind, but this is no longer serving a niche market. This is no longer a niche problem, because if we look into the connectivities, the connectivity is the element why people are buying router.
People just want to have a better connectivity, that's why they buy routers, that's why they input their Wi-Fi. What they're looking at is not to buy the networking equipment, is to get better connectivity or they want a mission-critical connectivity. Another example is, we believe this is an interesting approach, because now some customers, they might prefer a network-as-a-service business model. As we have shared with the team before, we have a bus company in California. They are providing the shuttle buses for corporations in the area. In this situation is we are not selling routers, we are not selling all these things, we are not selling data plans, but instead is that we are offering them a network-as-a-service business model.
This customer is super happy. They have been with us for more than three years, and we are seeing the use, the consumption with this Network as a Service keep rising every year. Is that we are seeing is there is an accelerated growth. So we are actually very. We see this approach as a very promising thing. Again, this is also related to why we believe we should ramp up our inventory in order to satisfy all these demands. We all know is that the supply chain problem. Has that been over? No, not really. I think the supply chain thing is still a challenging thing moving forward.
Some of the customers, maybe in the past, they were quite happy to stay with what they have. You know, it's actually a lot of times, if the network is working and things are working, people don't want to touch it, people don't want to break it. Also when they want to expand the network or when they want to upgrade their network. Maybe the existing supplier, they have a supply chain problem, or people might telling them, "Yes, the supply chain problem has been improved then. So this is a 24 weeks lead time." In the situations like that, because the post-COVID recovery is actually faster than most people expected.
In situations like that, they might want to look around and say, "Hey, I do not want to wait for another 24 weeks." They talk to their resellers, they talk to their suppliers, tech partners, and say, "Hey, what do you have?" They talk to their mobile operators, "Hey, I can't wait 20 more weeks. What do you have?" In the situations like that, we have seen a couple of times that our inventory is actually playing an important role for us to win over new customers. Does that mean no? People are looking at us just because is that we have the products available immediately. I think that is just a triggering point for us to win over some switching customers.
We actually have a couple of customers in the situations like that, they tell us, "Oh, in the past, we never think of Peplink because we have invested in another, in another technology or with another SD-WAN guys for years." We are fine with that. We are quite happy with that. We don't have the time to look around. Because of this shortage thing also when they look into our stuff, they found, wow, this is pretty amazing. Because as of now is, I can save 30% of my cost, 40% of my cost easily. At the same time is, we have a more user-friendly systems for them to use. They are saying this is actually way more simple than their original solution.
At the same time is our InTouch services, which is remote management remote access and remote device management capabilities. It's helping the IT folks, saving them a lot of time in managing multiple brands of products remotely. Now they do not need to send people to the site to really reconfigure something or troubleshooting something. These are non-Peplink devices. Because the InTouch, as the name implies, this is actually giving people remote troubleshooting capability to access all the devices on the network in a very secure way. I think is the InTouch piece is important for us to kick-start this kind of relationship. Again, if you look into our financials, our business model is actually extremely scalable.
Even though is that we have quite a couple of points, our gross margin has dropped at 12 points. You can see our net margin is actually not that much impacted with that. That's why is that we feel like is that, hey, actually, is that we can go with a more aggressive growth model by growing into this NaaS, Network as a Service business model. At the same time, is that this opened up our eyes, because now we are more willing to do M&A. We are more willing to look into other industry, other segments that might allow us to leverage our supercharged connectivity technologies to go into new areas. In terms of the investment highlight, I will pass this to... Okay, I'm sorry.
I'll cover this ecosystem slide first. I'll pass that to Chris. In summary, I think that this is the most important piece. Over the years, we keep building these four areas. Basically, most people feel like we are a hardware company because we have a pretty wide range of purpose-designed routers and devices. Yes, that's the hardware pieces. These hardware pieces is actually working very closely integrated with our SpeedFusion proprietary technology. That is a proprietary connectivity technologies. These two piece, the hardware, the firmware, they work hand in hand. This is actually a pretty reliable solution.
If you do the Google search, you may find is, hey, there are other companies doing similar things. People are now saying that is that they have a dual radio product, they have a dual SIM, or they have the bonding, this and that. Again, our solution, I will say this is the most proven one in the industry, because we have the longest history in history. At the same time, as you guys can tell, we have the financial strength to keep investing into building new hardwares, getting all these new hardwares certified by the operators, catching up with the very latest 5G technology. Also is putting all these new firmwares, firmware release 8.3 something like this.
This is a relentless process, because there's no endpoint. We have to keep developing new hardware. We have to keep developing new firmware. There's no ending for all these things. At the same time, we have a subscription-enabled business model, but all these things are related to the convenience features. That means we are not working like some of the competitors in the industry, which they are having an enforced subscription. If you stop the subscription, basically, that product that you pay for turns into a big paperweight. In our approaches, with all these convenience features, it requires a subscription. That means people are willing to pay for the subscription in exchange for some convenience.
I think is that this is a much more customer-friendly approach, and this is also much more friendly to the mobile operators. A lot of our go-to-market partners, they are also operators, so they are also managed service providers. In a situation like that, is that they see we are not competing with them. We are actually working more. Our business model is actually working more compatible to their business model. I will say is that in the past years, why usually is these operators is that their three partner, their first partner, when they pick a DNS, they pick somebody else and not Peplink. It's just because is our industry competitors, they are very willing to spend a big sales team to knock on the door and keep working on the education thing.
They did the education thing people work with them. After some years, especially now, is that when people are starting to require an upgrade path. A lot of time is that they find some of the products, some of the end user, end users, they do not want to upgrade the hardware because they just want to keep using the same product. They have no problem in paying the subscriptions, because our competitor is telling them is that, "Oh, I'm sorry, because you got to upgrade to the latest device, latest hardware platform in order to do this.
We do not have plans to support these previous models. This has created a big problem to the Mobile Network Operators, because now is that they are facing a situation that either they absorb the cost for that or is that the end user has to absorb the cost for that. That business model is actually again, is this is not coming from the end customer perspective. That's why is we are now seeing we have a lot of tier one operators. Well, they're starting to work with us. They're starting to work with us, not simply looking us as a lower cost alternative. No, they're not looking at us from that perspective, but they're looking at our business model is actually a more sustainable model and more compatible to their business model.
In a situation like that, our approach of working with a team of passion-driven go-to-market partners is really helping us to do this. Again, as you can tell, our sales, our SG&A, yeah, it doesn't increase a lot even though our business can keep on scaling. I would say, We are just touching the surface because is we have a long tail market reach. As you can tell, with our MODIs, with our applications, vertical markets, actually this is a high. I would say is that this % is just a beginning. I believe is that this ecosystem we are. Okay, again, we do not have a crystal ball five years ago, six years ago. We keep learning, we keep experimenting.
We are pretty comfortable and pretty confident that we have find out is the recipe for sustainable growth. Chris.
Okay. I think that's covered a lot of investment highlights here. Let's open the line for Q&A. If you have a question, please use the Zoom function to raise hands and we'll have someone to unmute your line.
This is Steven. Can you hear me?
Yes. Hi, Steven.
Hi. Hi, Alex. Hi, Chris. Thank you very much for the presentation. I get a couple of questions, so I will ask them one by one. The first one is actually on the update on the competitive landscape. May I know, like, whether there's any significant change in the competitive landscape in the past six months? Especially, I also want to ask on the gross margin part, because, I know that, I mean, you already talked about that we are adopting a very different strategy with acting more aggressively compared to what we did before.
I'm just wondering, like, whether this is an act that was passive or we actually actively do that. When we see the gross margin decreasing, we also want to know that, like, is it because the market is getting much more competitive that we are being forced to adopt such strategy, or we actually want to take the initiative to do that? This is really what we want to do. Thank you.
Okay. Number one question is, this one actually we do not want to prolong the sales cycle. A lot of time is that this is not because of the competitive landscape. This is just because customers are telling us, "Hey, the currency is actually making us difficult." Is, is, even though is, yes, we do charge them on a local currency. A lot of times is, yes, is, there are many reasons that people are looking for better pricing because of the post-COVID and this and that. A lot of times our approach is, "Hey, why we Because this is not a one-time deal, so let's don't bother with that." We tell our channel partners that, "Okay, whenever you have a deal, just try to close it as soon as possible.
Just try to make the customer happy with what we are offering, what we are offering. Just try to make the customer feel like we are easy to work with. We are not bothered. We don't worry about the margin. We don't bother about anything like this, because what we are interested to do is to grow the market. Again, we see, we believe, we are confident that we have the recipe for growth. In situations like that, just don't waste your time, just close the deal and focus with the next customer. In other words, yes, we proactively do this. This is not because of the competitive situation. By the way, there's no change at all.
Okay. Okay, thank you. My next question is also on, yeah. I know that, I mean, just now you mentioned that actually, customers are... they prefer to use the same product for a longer period of time. They don't want to, like, keep paying a lot of subscriptions or being forced to pay subscriptions or the use. On one hand, I think when we look at some customers feedback, they prefer to stick with the same provider. If the provider is not doing their job, actually, they don't usually switch to other, like, players easily. I just want to know that, like, for example, just a rough picture.
When for all the new customers that we onboard, are they coming from other competitors or we actually most of them are from what you mentioned, like well, from those new customers that when we grow the market and they are new users for this product?
Okay. I think the good thing is in our industry, actually, from time to time, all this technological change makes people feel like it's time to upgrade. For example, all the operators, they have a very big motivation in pushing to 5G. For the customers, they also have a big motivation to move to 5G too, because the data plan is cheaper. The cost per gig is way lower than the LTE. I would say, so every couple of years, people see that there's a need to upgrade. That means we are not really focusing into a dog fight with the competitor or anything like that. No, that's not the situation.
Yes, this is still growing, this is still growing market. The connectivity market is still growing very fast, and applications are growing. Even for the same customers, maybe historically, they're using a competitor's product, but maybe for a new product. No, for a new deployment. Now they are deploying in the bulge. Now they are deploying in a new group of branches. They will do the math again. When they do the math again is that they probably will see, okay, maybe this one is not that mission critical. Maybe I can try with a new vendor. Maybe I can try with something else to experiment, to see how that works. That is actually creating a new opportunity for us. Again, I think this is a growing market.
Our competitors, they are doing very well too. They are busy with their approach, and they are busy with their customer base. Especially now our competitor has fallen into a big conglomerate. Yes, they are busy and we are busy, but, well, we actually don't step on each other that often.
Okay, thank you. I have two more questions, and I will leave it for the others. The next one is also on the outlook. I mean, on one hand, everyone know that this market is still expanding, and like everyone, there are new customers. They want to upgrade their products, their services. On the other hand, we also see that like the macro environment is very uncertain. I mean, U.S., Europe, both market are actually under like a lot of challenges in the coming 1- 2 years. What are we expecting in the next 1-2 years?
Are we expecting more further decrease in our margin, some challenges in our growth, or we actually expect that we can continue to deliver certain amount of growth in the coming 1- 2 years?
You know what? This actually is again, this is a great industry. Like last year, you guys keep asking about the Starlink. Is that going to be a competing technology or things like that. In fact, now is we're actually we have a launch of opportunities created by Starlink. Yeah, because with the Starlink, with the nature of the Low Earth Orbit thing, every couple of minutes, actually, there are a lot of tiny little outages on Starlink. That is actually, it is creating a new opportunity for us. That's why is we believe is, hey, we should market this as a supercharged connectivity. This is actually a more easy pitch to tell what we really do.
You guys, I think that we have a lot of longtime investors here, and again, is, we appreciate you guys a lot. At the same time, you know, in the past, it was quite difficult to understand what we do. It was quite difficult to understand our value. Now it's actually I think with this new approach, with this supercharged connectivity thing, it is easy to digest this. It's easy to understand. That's why we believe, in terms of the mobility, the RV market, the work from home market, the Starlink market, the IoT market, the autonomous driving, basically. Oh, yeah, also the teleoperation. Everything these days needs to be connected.
There are just multiple ways to connect it together. At the same time is you also see even our wired line product, there is a growth there. Actually it surprised us. It surprised all of us. I think it's about like a year ago or is, you know, previous calls is, we would. Yeah. We was. You guys asked us questions about why the wired line product is growing. I think is that in a nutshell, connectivity is a growing market, and that is applications will keep growing. That's why we are not too much worried about the growth. At the same time is do we care about the gross margin? Do we care about other things? We are still too small. We are just at the beginning.
That's why is we feel like it's more important to bring people into this ecosystem. I would say is, if needed, we are willing to drop the gross margin further. Again, as you can tell, it doesn't impact the bottom line that much. Again, even if that is going to impact the bottom line, we still believe this is the right thing to do because, I'm sure you guys understand this actually, at Plover Bay, our team, including myself, and that is, everybody's a shareholder. And that is, we are looking for a sustainable growth. We are looking at the long-term thing. We are willing to sacrifice a short-term gross profit, net profit in order to do something right.
Again, we are very excited because we feel like this is a new industry. That is, you know what? This is a once in a lifetime thing, is that you have a chance to create a new industry.
Yes. Yes. I mean, we have been shareholders for a long time. Actually, I think I also didn't mention that, I think in like a few months ago, you guys won some webinars, which I guess get a lot of attention from the industry as well, right? Like, this relate to the Starlink. Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.
My final question is on the capital allocation. I mean, of course we are very happy to see like you guys can keep re- paying high dividends as well as like delivering growth. I think this is amazing. I just wonder, like, you once mentioned that you might consider some M&A, I mean, like maybe last year or so. I just wonder, like, what's the plan right now? Are you still looking for some M&A opportunities? If so, like what kind of things are you looking into and like what kind of size as well?
Okay, great. This is a great question. First of all, we say again, we are here looking at the sustainable thing or again, is, anything that can help us to achieve the goal of creating a new industry. We are excited about that. I think is, the NaaS, Network as a Service model is very interesting. If that's the case, you can say, you can imagine when we are looking at the acquisition target, we don't necessarily want to buy another router company, Wi-Fi company, networking equipment company. No, we are not interested in that. We are seeing that is, hey, any other industry that would requires connectivity is interesting. If we are doing that, then is, we have a customer base going to deploy our connectivity product. We are looking at that level of synergy.
At the same time, are we looking at a mega... No, this is not the right terms because we are very small, so there's no mega thing here. Are we going to do a really substantial acquisition, which is having a similar market size like ours? No, that's not the case, too. I think all this value creation is actually coming from software. It's actually coming from automation. It's really coming from anything that you can make the customer's life easier. Anything that makes the customer's life easier, customers are willing to pay for subscription. Our hypothesis is along that path. At the same time, this may be geographically helping us to enter into a new market or anything like that. Yes, we are looking into that. Can...
At the same time is that you guys might or we are. You might ask a question is, hey, all the money has been turned into dividend, and then it's all going to the investors' pocket. You don't have much cash in doing these things. I think that there are two ways to look into this. Number one thing is, actually, we generate cash pretty good. I think we have a pretty good capability to generate cash over all the years. We have a track record on that. That's for sure. At the same time is if there's a need to grow the company, and that is, we may need to sacrifice the dividend.
At that time is we may need to strike a balance, because I think some of the investors, when they invest on us, maybe there's that. Maybe dividend is the reason. Maybe most of the investors, just like you guys, the long-term support supporters, yeah, dividend is a good thing, but actually if that is needed to sacrifice, you guys are fine with that. I think is we don't have an answer for that yet. I think is we will try to strike a balance in order to appreciate our long-term supporters. At the same time is we will also believe is with our capability to generate good cash. I think we might not have a big problem if we need to raise a loan or something like that too.
That's why we are not too concerned about do we have the resources to do the M&A and things like that. I think the compatibility thing, the cultural compatibility thing and that kind of things, the mindset, that is even more important. As you guys know, it's actually changing somebody's mindset is almost like mission impossible.
Yes, I agree. I think, I mean, you are the largest shareholder with 75% stake, so I trust your decision. Yeah. Thank you very much. I would leave the floor-
Yes, Steven, I want to share with you that is, I'm no longer 75% shareholder. I am.
Because of some stock exercise, right?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
This is still the baby. Yes. I think this is not, this is not just myself. I think all of us, we all feel like it's exciting to build something out of nothing. Now it is even more exciting because there is a good chance that we can create a new industry.
Okay. Okay. Fair. Thank you very much. Yeah. talk to you soon.
Yeah. Thanks, Steven.
Hi, this is Gerald here. Can I ask a question?
Sure, Gerald.
Okay, thanks.
No problem.
Yeah. Just have a third question on the future growth. Given this new strategy of more aggressive growth, what should we expect in terms of organic growth in the coming years?
Yeah, I think is 20% is actually is on the conservative side.
Sorry. You said 20%?
20. Yes. 20. 20%.
Okay, thanks. What does that require in terms of organizations on your side? I mean, in terms of distribution network, you need to access more partners.
No, no, no. No. No. I think it's, as I mentioned that this is a conservative side, and then is, we just keep doing our job, and then is, we just keep our passion, and then is, so sit back and relax, and I believe we can reach that number.
Okay. Also in terms of headcount for the company, will we need to hire more people to sustain this growth?
No, no, not really. Not really. We actually hate to manage people. If we don't need to hire many more people is that we want to keep as small as possible because we believe is having a small capable team and dynamic team is allowing us to react or experiment way better. No, we don't need much of that. Okay, I need to clarify this a bit. Don't forget that is we have a really good community. This community will actually grow along with our partners. You might see is we don't need to add a lot of headcount, but actually the community is growing bigger and bigger.
In fact, recently is one of our webinar that is very encouraging to us because we have more than 1,000 people joining the webinar. Yeah, that is actually pretty encouraging to us. We've never seen that kind of things before. I will say we do not need to have a lot of people being a Peplink employee, but we are still growing the Peplink community. I would say the community is more important.
Okay. In order to sustain this 20% growth, you think that the existing organization would be enough? There is no major disruptions or big changes to?
Yes.
-between
We don't need to do anything in order to reach this.
Just last one for me. You mentioned M&A. Either are there any specific capability that you are missing currently to meet the need of your customers? Any specific?
No, no, no. No. I don't think we are missing any capability, but we are looking at acquiring more customers. That's why is we are looking at that related to the Network as a Service model. The Network as a Service model, meaning that is if that company. Okay, just an example. Maybe that company is doing, is managing, a couple of thousands of restaurants. If they are managing a couple of thousands of digital signage or something like that, which requires connectivity. Yes, we are interested in that kind of business because is then is our connectivity story can complement to that. We are looking more like a customer acquisitions from that perspective. Again, this is just a beginning.
We are learning and, we are working with some of the investment bankers trying to locate these companies. We are working with the industry folks trying to learn more about who might be the target. Yeah. The other thing is, yeah, this is not a speed dating thing. It takes time and it takes a bit of luck.
Okay. Do you think that there could be a kind of vertical integration to have a distributor within the group? Is that the idea, or?
No, no, no. Again, we are not looking at acquiring a distributor. We are not looking at acquiring a networking company, a distributor. No, not anything like that. We are looking at any parties that might need connectivity. We are looking for partnership, M&A, or even crossover branding opportunities. We're just looking at anything that requires connectivity.
Okay, thanks. Thanks for sharing all of this. Thank you. That's all for me. Yeah.
Thanks.
Hello, thank you. Yeah, I have some questions. The first question is related to the securities. We know, I learned that your products has stayed for five years. I also see that in some of the competitors, especially the SD-WAN competitors, in a product they have already upgraded to the NGFW. For example, do you think this kind of. I don't quite understand why you, it seems that the security is not quite.
Okay, Lucas, I understand where you're coming from.
Yeah.
Let me summarize your question.
Yeah.
Basically you're asking us is, How are we dealing with security?
Yeah.
As other SD-WAN competitors or as other SD-WAN players, they have been improving a lot on the security or emphasizing a lot on security. Why Peplink is not doing anything like that? You're asking this question, right?
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Okay. I think it's actually a very good question. The 1 thing is, yes, if we look into the Gartner report, Gartner is saying the same thing. Gartner is saying there's a patterns missing all these security features. I think the thing is we looked into this. The fourth point put is like this. There are more than 20 SD-WAN players. Everybody is chasing the same thing. Everybody is doing the same thing. Should we play the catch up game? Should we just go to deliver the security feature and become a me too and meet the checkbox? I think is, we decided, hey, actually we are seeing a bigger market than SD-WAN. We are no longer an SD-WAN company. It's just we do have some SD-WAN features.
Our SD-WAN features. It might just meet the bill, it might just meet the requirement of most people or some people. This might not meet the requirement of the Fortune 500 folks. Are we going to give up that area? No. Because even when we have that security feature, we are going to compete with another 20 something guys. That is a tough play. That is a dog fight. We don't want that. Instead we focus on our resources, the development effort, to focus on connectivity. In other words, now, a customer who has been using their favorite SD-WAN, they can still deploy the Peplink or the Plover Bay's solution with the existing SD-WAN. Because picking an SD-WAN is almost like religious.
If you have already using a one brand SD-WAN, you do not want to touch another one, or you don't want to change anything like that, even though you might not happy with them. Why you do not want to change all these things? Because changing all these things is an ongoing task. This is no joke. It requires lots of time and effort in order to make all the switches. People want to connect that so they can use the Peplink product to connect to multiple 5G. They can connect to Starlink, they can connect to OneWeb, they can connect to different 5G broadband operators.
That's why is we feel like we can still address the market of these Fortune 500, but we are not going to address them with SD-WAN. We are focusing on the connectivity. Our go-to-market channel partners, they can work with any SD-WAN players. That's why is I don't think we are competing with the SD-WAN folks, because is we are seeing a different game here. We are not seeing SD-WAN, we are seeing connectivity.
Okay, okay. I understand what you mean. Still, if they, these competitors, they included your features into their products, then what will? When they can tell their customer that they also have the features that you have, then what is?
Yes, yes. I know. Okay, I know where you're coming from. If people are just looking at a checkbox-
Yes.
The competitor can deliver the feature and have a checkbox. If you know just like, in order to do things really good, there is a lot of delicacy. There are a lot of attention to details. There are a lot of convenience features. For example, yes, 5G. Many SD-WAN routers, they are telling people that they have a 5G modem inside. They can connect to the 5G thing. Do they have the global certification? They only have certification in certain countries, but do they have a global certifications? Probably not. At the same time is when you deploy a product like that, how do you switch the SIM? Because maybe is you want to connect to the mobile operators.
You want to change the SIM card, you do not want to climb out of the window and dismantle that outdoor unit and add the SIM card or change SIM card or things like that. I think is, when we are really focusing on something, when you really focus on something, you see things that other people don't see. That's why you are more leading, you are more visionary, because you stay focused. That is exactly the situation here. I think is, if people are just looking for a checkbox, yes, they made the checkbox, but they are still missing a lot of details. I'm not concerned or worried about that. As I said, we are seeing this is the opportunity of a new industry, which is a supercharged connectivity, which is offering connectivity right out of the box.
I don't think that the SD-WAN guys, they're looking into this yet. Again, even when they need to do something like this is not an overnight thing. There's a lot of integration, there's a lot of development. Again, we are not the best yet. There are a lot of room for us to improve too, and that is where we keep improving. That's why some of you may be using our products too, and you will see that, hey, why... We are improving a lot on the mobile apps because we believe that the future of UI should be coming from the mobile apps.
This is always our mobile apps, so we have a version one, version 1.0 or whatever. We are still not satisfied with that. We believe that we are just, we're learning to. Again, every company has resources issue, and we need to put the focus on what we truly believe what we can create tremendous value. That's why is that we don't think we should catch up the other security features with other guys. At the same time, is we are not afraid of other guys catching up what we are doing. Because in all these things, it's not, it's just not like you hire another 1,000 programmers, 100 programmers, and you can do this. No.
Not. That's not the case. Actually, there's a lot of interaction between the end customers and ourselves. That is with all this interaction, you want to pay really actually good customers. When we are talking about good customers, that doesn't mean they're paying us a lot of money. Most of the time is that we see that these guys, they yell at us, they tell us is that we are doing something stupid. They tell us is that this is not right. I think is that these are the good customers because is that they really care about what a good product should be, and these are the good customers. We are very lucky that is we have a good community of these good customers.
Okay. Okay. I see. I see. I understand what you say. Also, I have another question about the customer service.
Mm-hmm.
we know that, I learned that.
Okay, I understand. I understand. Okay. Let me try to guess what you, what you trying to. Yeah. Okay. Actually, customer service is pretty bad at Peplink. We all know about that. Okay, why this is the situation? Because is actually this is more like the traditional airline and the discounted airline approach. I guess or if we are. I still remember my first, my first time traveling on a discounted airline in USA, that was a shocking experience. Yes.
Okay.
There is no boarding pass and things like that. There's people... I was asking, wow, what's this? This is pretty crazy. I do not have a seat number and things like that. Then the guy who took me on the flight, he told me that, "Hey, come on, calm down. This is a bus." Now I think, if people are so get used to the traditional approach, they might say, "Hey, Peplink, you guys have terrible customer service. There's no hotline and this and that." First of all, we are bridging that gap. That's why you can see our PrimeCare+. Now we are offering 24/7 phone calls answered by human beings.
We are starting to improve situations like that, trying not to scare away people coming from the traditional airline to this low-cost carrier approach. At the same time is, I think this is more like an expectation issue. Of course is we need to improve our forum better. We need to improve our ticketing system better. We need to improve our response times better. We are learning. At the same time is we also feel like is, that's why is we need to work with the operators, we need to work with the MSP, we need to work with the MNOs. A lot of times is that our partners, they handle very good customer service. We want to be the technology behind. We want to work with these guys.
A lot of times when we talk to these operators, we told them is that, "Hey, don't treat us like another networking vendor. Treat us like your product house." Customer service and all that kind of things is we have to rely entirely with you guys. We'll work with you on that. At the same time, we create something that is not available elsewhere. I think is that this customer service thing is similar to the security features you just mentioned. Yes. If we are comparing to traditional airline approach, yes, people say we're crazy, we're doing a terrible job and things like that. Yes, it's true.
At the same time is I think this is more like an expectation issue. Again, is if there is a MSP in front, then there's no problem at all. I hope is this is the question you want to bring up. Is that right?
Yeah. Exactly. I have no more questions.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Oh, great. Yeah. Thanks for the great financial results and it, I found many things very exciting, like the re-recurring revenue, they are very generous growth. There's pretty good year so far. I have a question on the first line, right? Starlink, looks like, it's a net positive for you guys and…
Yes.
I just wonder. Looks like they haven't taken it for granted, but it's a pretty big first line. Why do they choose Starlink? Is that because the pricing or some features, a unique feature you guys have?
Okay. I think it's our number one thing is, yeah. When we work with the Starlink thing, this is not Starlink Corporation working with us. This is the Starlink customers working with us. You can tell, you can see that the Starlink customers is including the RAs, recreation vehicle owners. This is including is the maritime customers using Starlink. This is the operators that is reselling Starlink. We are working with people who use Starlink, but this is not a Starlink corporate. We are not working with the Starlink Corporation. I think it's with that leading cruise line, one of the leading cruise line company, yes, the Starlink know about us, but that is not driven by them. This is driven by the end user.
I think, when people are using our product for that, this is not because of the pricing. This is mostly from Google search. We have a good reputation in doing this unbreakable connectivity or this multi-WAN thing. Actually, a lot of times, all these exciting opportunities, people find us just from Google search. I would say is, yes, on the surface, there are other companies who can do similar things, who can still fulfill the checkbox, click the checkbox approach, yes. They can click the checkbox. Again, in terms of details, in terms of the level of details, I think we are probably the best in the industry. Of course, yeah, this may be biased, because we are...
This is like 16, 17 years, and we truly believe we are the best.
Best in terms of what? The service or the features or?
Sorry, can you repeat the question?
You said you are the best in the industry, is that in terms of the features or the next SpeedFusion?
Oh.
You provide a special feature for the next one?
Okay. I think it's actually is not really the features. Again, most people don't get this. Most people feel like, so this is the feature. I think it's the whole, the overall experience and the reliability. It's very similar to when you buy a car, you. Yes, sometimes the features are exciting you when you buy a new car. A lot of times, so you just want a car to be able to, in a snowy weather, ride smoothly. In rainy days, you expect the car to ride smoothly and safely.
I think is that people appreciate our product, and what we do really well is the when we do the multi-WAN thing, when we do the SpeedFusion thing, this is an all situation. In most situations, is we just do it very well. This is almost like the... If I use an automotive industry as an example, this is an all-terrain vehicle. Our technology, our SpeedFusion thing is an all-terrain technology that can combine multiple links together. I think this is actually the fundamental reason why people love to use our product, because they're not buying a product to troubleshoot. They're not buying a product to call customer service.
basically the reliable. Yeah.
Sorry, I also want to add that, you know, customer feedback in the past, they tell us that, you know, our whole system is really easy to manage and is really easy to pick up. Yeah, we designed, for example, the InControl to be very simple for people to learn and use. This is one of the things that we hear a lot from our customers.
Yeah. Basically it's easy to use and the software is also reliable, in terms of connectivity, right?
Yes, exactly. I think it's a reliability is a big thing.
Okay. Okay, I have one more question about the, your new initiative, like the private 5G for the corporations.
Yes.
Is this basically a big segment in the next three to five years? You're just starting and trying to testing the water?
Right. Okay. We believe at this moment, we believe is that this thing is exciting because according to market research, even though most of the time we do not believe in market research. From a practical standpoint is we also believe is the private 5G is basically kind of like an extension of Wi-Fi. As a managing an outdoor Wi-Fi is actually not an easy task. A lot of time is the problem with the Wi-Fi is related to the roaming. The roaming of the devices, like phone or like IoT devices or like robotics and things like this, the Wi-Fi roaming is always kind of like tricky. Even though there's an industry standard, but actually that's always tough to do it well.
Is also private 5G seems to be able to solve that problem. That's why yes, at this moment we see this is actually a logical move for us to expand into that. Again, is that going to take off really soon? We don't know, but we believe is what we are doing, this is an adjacent technology, and then is this is going to make the whole supercharged connectivity more interesting. We are looking into this. I think now this might be a bit early to say, is this thing going to be substantial in five years' time or what? No, we don't know.
Again, it's like in all technology business, we should not look into any new technology like that, because there are lots of hypes, there are lots of come and go in the technology thing. The good thing, again, is the good thing about is our approach is we have a small team. When we have a small team, is we work with the ecosystem partners. These ecosystem partners, including the contract manufacturers. These contract manufacturers, they actually have a lot of exposures in this technology and then is in the with various operators, customers, and things like that. I would say is a lot of new technology we experiment, and then is we try to find out the tipping point. Once we hit the tipping point, usually that thing will grow really fast.
How soon can we find tipping point, inflection point? We don't know. I think is again, is from our previous experiences, you know, you just keep working on this, one day you'll find, hey, yes, it works. You need to turn this, you need to change that in order to make it work.
Okay. Okay, great. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the good news.
Yeah, thanks.
Hi, Alex. It's Andy. Thanks very much for taking my questions. I have two quick one before my battery runs out. The first one is you mentioned about 20% growth. My questions are quite similar to Victor. If you can elaborate a little bit more on the 20% growth and also, what are the biggest obstacles you see in achieving that 20% growth? That's my first question. I'll quickly go on the other one just in case my phone dies. It's about M&A. Can you elaborate a little bit more on your M&A philosophy? I think investors are concerned or pay more attention to that because this may be your very first M&A.
Until you have an M&A process that is proven, I think investors will be, like, scrutinizing the M&As. I'm just wondering, what's your philosophy there, and how do you make sure that it doesn't distract management? How do you make sure the new target have the incentive and all that? How do you envisage that M&A going to work?
Okay, great.
Yeah. Thanks.
Good. Let me answer the M&A question first. Actually, honestly speaking, this is a mindset change here. In the past, as you guys here have seen is we keep looking at the organic thing, and then is, yes, it's a mindset change. What we believe in one thing is, a lot of behavior is a number one thing is you need to have a mindset change in order to have the behavior working properly. Now is we have a mindset change, then is, because in the past is we even shut our ears to ignore anything related to this. Now we are more open-minded. We want, as we mentioned earlier, we want to look into what are the industries that demands a reliable connectivity.
If we can have a partnership with that person, we do not want to have a M&A. If that it can be done with a partnership, if that can be done with a crossover branding and things like that, or if that can be done with a reselling opportunity, we don't want to do the M&A thing too. Dealing with people is difficult. We don't enjoy dealing with people that much. I think with that kind of mindset, we just basically telling ourselves we should be more open-minded in looking into this. At the same time, we also believe maybe if that is. Yeah, 'cause a lot of these operations, they may have only like a couple of people.
They might have only like a small team of things like that. That might not be that risky. As you guys know is we have a development team in Lithuania. Actually is, yes, that was back in 2019. To a certain extent, you can say you can treat that pretty much like a M&A, except there's no financial transaction. Building a team in Lithuania, building a team in Taiwan, so all these things require integration. There is no difference from acquiring a small company. I think is from that perspective, we are not new. Building a new team, building a new team in Malaysia, building a new team here, there, Philippines. Yes, I think is that this is not new to us.
I think is on that part is not that much a problem, integrating or building a team. Is on the financial side, as I mentioned it, so is that we are not doing this because is, we have a private equity backing us and force us to do so. No, we don't have that kind of pressure. It's just is, we just feel like is we should be more open-minded to do this. Are we in a rush to do all these things? Not at all. Again, this is just a mindset change to tell ourselves to be more open-minded. Again, you know is, we have been extremely practical in growing the business. If we need to drop the price to close the deal faster, we just do it.
If we need to stop the inventory in order to catch up with the growth or to solve the supply chain problem, we just go ahead. Because this is a U.S. company. Again, it's we are not looking at any short-term thing to boost up the stock price or anything like that. We don't need anything like that. That's why is I think the M&A thing, the concern and that kind of things, don't worry too much because as I shared with everybody is, you can tell I have a little bit. Okay, what's the right word to describe this? Okay.
My shareholding coming from 75 to 68.5 is already something that I believe this needs to be done. Because we have a great team. This is something that we need to do this. If we are going to do another acquisition that will bring that into 65, 62 or something like that, yes, if that's a good team, yeah, if that is something that worth the risk, yes, we'll do that. I mean we don't do acquisition for the sake of acquisition. Because I guess Andy, I guess you probably understand what I mean. If not, just let me know. Back to the 20% growth question.
The 20% growth question is actually a pretty organic thing. Again, if we look into the 5G market, if we look into the connectivity market, if we look into the Starlink maritime market and all these kind of things, 20% is actually pretty much like common sense thing. That's why we feel like this is actually not a threshold. I think this is actually a pretty much generic thing to do this. By the way, we are referring to the revenue growth, not the volume growth.
That's great. Thank you so much, Alex.
Thanks.
We have some typed in questions coming from Kate. I think she's asking, can you provide some color on the warranty extension business?
Right. In 2022, we did quite a few things to try to boost our the value proposition of our warranty packages or the subscription packages, right? One thing we did was we developed this feature called InTouch, which we've already gone through. Second is we bundled more software features into those subscription packages. Another thing that we did after the year-end was that we launched something called PrimeCare+, which Alex has already said that, you know, provides 24/7 support for our customers. It's in terms of pricing, PrimeCare+ is slightly more expensive, around 5-10% more expensive than the regular PrimeCare packages.
If you go up to three years, then it's actually cheaper. The philosophy is that we want, you know, we want really wanna drive this warranty expansion business, right? As I said, in 2022, the volume, the actual dollar amount that we received from customers buying warranty subscription packages has increased 49%. I think that's a pretty good growth. We wish to, you know, keep that kind of momentum. Yeah. Victor, I think you asked that how are our peers responding to our aggressive promotions slash pricing. In the medium term, what is our ideal target inventory turnover day to support our targeted growth rates?
Chris, maybe you answer the numbers question first, and then I'll respond to the question about the aggressive promotional pricing thing.
Sure. Sure. I think we do not really set a target for our inventory turnover days. We think that, you know, it's important to control our inventory growth. Having said that, we also need to ensure that we have enough, you know, products to meet our customer needs. Right? I think, in the coming couple years, we do try to decrease the inventory days a little bit, but we do not have a certain target that we wanna get under.
Yeah. Okay. Speaking about the competitors, the peers, what is their response? I would say, they don't care because just like traditional airline, they don't care about what the discount airline is trying to do. I think if we look into their niche products, if we look into what they're doing with their new products, I feel like it's, I imagine, this is my pure imagination. Their engineers probably, we respect our engineers a lot because we are seeing a lot of interesting things they're doing actually. Finally showing on their products. That is on the hardware level. I think our approach, and then together with this, is the super trusted connectivity approach and all these kind of things.
I do not believe is that the other peers are able to replicate. Are able to replicate. There are a couple of reasons for that. Number one thing is nobody's believing this. The number two thing is, maybe people are thinking, are saying that is, "No, this is just pretty simple. I just work with a MVNO, or I just put a SIM card inside, and that's it." Actually it is not like that. It's all these things in order to work, in order to work magically, it requires a lot of software integration. It requires a lot of integration together where for hardware, firmware, and the cloud, and the app. Again, even on this piece, we are not perfect yet.
I think is people are either ignoring us or seeing is, this is a niche market thing. I guess it's, Yeah, this is not a benefit for us because so many people are still seeing this as a niche thing. That's where I think is even though if this is a niche, but we're doing pretty well with this long tail. Again, it's actually, honestly speaking, is we don't put much attention on our peers because it's, we just believe is that we just need to run faster. Our competitor is probably ourself. We just need to keep improve ourself and keep running, run faster. If we are running faster than the peers, then we don't care. We don't care what they think.
Okay. We have a question from Paul Ryce. The question is, the U.S. is your largest market. How do you rate the impact of new U.S. regulations trying to ban Chinese telecom products, especially 5G, from the U.S. market? How will U.S. customers react themselves over time?
I think politics is something that we never know. What we are seeing right now is, number one thing is, technology business is kind of like global business. That is a lot of our team members. I think is now I'm sitting in a room of five people, in this room is, there are two Canadians here. No, no, there's one American, there's one Canadian here. As always, we have a mix of different culture. We have a mix of different citizens working together. Honestly, I don't think there is much issue on this because if we are the best in the, in this area, I don't see why people are not using ours.
At the same time, we are not into the really serious and deep tech thing. Again, I think our value proposition is just making something reliable, something convenient. Yes, imagine that this is a low-cost airline which is safe, which is convenient, and which is reliable. Yes, this is our value proposition. You know, we are not into the really deep tech thing, and we are not into the really deep semiconductor thing. Yeah, to a certain extent, we are just a modem. We are just a very reliable modem. Very convenient to use and affordable and elegant. I don't think this is very pretty much a problem.
Oh, by the way, at the same time, it's actually we are opening a new R&D center in Toronto this year. Why? Because, yeah, we have some team members, Canadians, they wanna move back. Yes, we do, we think is a whole, okay, we take this opportunity to do that. By the way, our CEO is actually based in Toronto. I hope this answer your question, Paul.
Our next question. Revenue has grown by 15%, but due to declined gross margin in all the products, EPS only grow 6%. How do you see EPS growing over time? Do you plan to get back in line with revenue growth? If how, if so, how? I think first of all, mainly our gross margin has declined this year. I think in 2023, we have less pressure on semiconductor product pricing. Back in 2020, I think late 2021 and early 2022, that was kind of the peak of semiconductor component shortages. At that time, you know, suppliers, they won't even...
They won't, they weren't willing to even give us a lead time on when they can deliver our orders, right. The situation has kind of improved over the past six months. I would say, the shortage situation has gotten a lot better. I think, once we digest the, you know, the product set we currently have, and then it'll be, you know, the cost pressures will start to go down. I think in 2023, the pressure on gross margin will be less severe than what we faced in 2022.
By the way, I wanna share this, some of our process with you guys too. Actually we are not driven by these EPS, the semi-annual report and things like this. What we are looking into is the opportunity to create a new market, a new industry. We are seeing that is whatever makes sense, we'll just keep doing this. That's why it's actually, you know, we don't really care about this EPS, honestly.
Okay. Next is, can you talk more about your moat? For example, is to stop competitors replicating the features of Touch-?
I think it's going back to the run fast approach. I mean, it's there's nothing we can stop our competitors replicating this and that. Actually sometimes it's actually quite satisfying seeing competitors chasing us. Yes, it's satisfying. Yes, because that is endorsing we are the market leader. There's also is every market leader will have followers. People will just copy, people will just try to replicate the same thing. Again, is they're just playing catch up. Is again is don't forget that when we work with our community members, is We see new opportunities. We work on new stuff. We just make it more reliably is we just make it more convenient.
Yeah, just the checkbox approach, we don't worry about that. Again, we just keep running fast to reach our hopefully to reach our goal. We don't turn our head that often to see, hey, what are you guys doing? Yes. Yeah, but what we are seeing is people chasing us at the back and yelling at you is pretty satisfying.
I think there's a few things that are currently unique in our ecosystem. For example, a lot of our devices, routers are now, they currently have built-in 5G LTE, and I think none of our competitors have this kind of thing.
Again, is people when people just keep trying to copy and following this and that, there is a lack of coherence. Yeah, a lack of coherence. It's actually making all these things is not usable or not convenient at all. Again, is when we put all these features together, the coherence thing is actually, is a big deal. It's not just the features, it's the overall experience, it's the reliability.
Okay. next question comes from Graham Rhodes. Yeah.
Hey, guys. Thank you for the excellent presentation and taking so many questions. I would like to go back to the inventory, and I was wondering if you can, first of all, give us some breakdown as to the composition of the inventory. Can you talk about like what is raw materials, what is work in progress, what are finished goods? Just so we can have a sense of, you know, what, for example, like semiconductors you've stockpiled or other components versus goods that you have built but haven't sold yet. Next, I'd like to ask if you have any idea about the level of inventory in the channel, and if you can share your thoughts on that. The third one is still on inventory.
You know, you're constantly like putting out new products and your product development cycle is very quick. I'm wondering, you know, you have nine months worth of inventory, let's say. What is the risk of that going out of fashion or whatever in like a year's time and having to be written down? Thank you.
All right. Let me answer the breakdown. Basically, raw materials and consumables, those are the, you know, the IC, integrated circuit chips or cellular modems that has not been assembled into the devices yet, right? This is the semiconductors stockpile. Finished goods, mainly it includes all the hardware. It could be some semi-finished products as well. There's that. Sorry, the next question is-
Channel inventory.
Yeah. Okay. Channel inventory.
You've been long, you know, you've reported like 270 days of inventory. I was asking like, what proportion of that is raw materials? What proportion of that is work in progress? What proportion of that is finished goods?
Okay. Finished goods is 44% of that. Raw materials is 56%.
Okay, that's helpful. That kinda ties into my third question, which is what is the risk of inventory write-downs?
Okay. I, let me just get back to you on the channel inventory. Yeah, we do track our channel inventory in our channel partners and, you know, their in terms of their the inventory size, it's been, you know, I would say in terms of number of days, it's been pretty stable. There's no buildup. The next one is write down, right? Yeah,
Okay. Let me answer this question. First of all, the channel. First of all, let me clarify the channel inventory. The channel's. First of all, we need to understand one thing. These days, nobody really plans for many things. People just want to place an order, and they will. This is the Amazon effect probably. Yeah, even for the larger projects, people want to place an order, and then just want you to ship immediately. That's why our channel partners, they do stock something, but at the same time, these channel partners, they are not stupid because they are owner-managed. Again, in our ecosystem, most of these distributors, they are owner-managed. They maintain a decent inventory, but it's not a crazy inventory.
At the same time is, are we able to stop them, stop the channel? No way to do this because they won't have anything like that too. We don't want to do that here because we know that's going to hurt us. In other words is, we don't see any channel inventory is creating any problems. I know is that these kind of numbers will scare investors. It will scare you guys. That's why is we spend the time to explain to you why we are doing this. Again. The number 1 thing is when we place an, a larger order, because it's analysis of the contract manufacturer that we are working on is really tier 1 contract manufacturers.
When we are able to order a more substantial quantity or much larger quantity, number one thing is we see if we can secure the supply relatively good. We are working with these guys, tier one contract manufacturers to make this happen. These are new 5G products. These are the new stuff. This is not the old stuff. This is not the thing that is going to write off trade, the write down and that kind of things. These are the new platforms. We believe these inventory of the finished products of these goods are able to allow us to enter into new opportunities way faster. Because we just shared this earlier. Some of the time is maybe is another.
Another competitor is they need 24 weeks lead time, we can deliver in two weeks time, this is a substantial advantage. With this substantial advantage, the customer, I mean, this is the new customer is able to see, "Oh, this is actually a better deal. This is actually a better product. It's a better platform to switch." That is the case. Again, we don't see the risk of write down that much because this is all these things are the new chipsets and the new products.
Okay. Thank you very much, Alex.
Yep.
Okay. From Victor. Given the enormous opportunities available, we are willing to price our costs competitively. Is there a minimum hardware gross margin we are willing to accept to increase our penetration?
We have. No. There's no limit on that. There's no limit on that. I think it's, again, we're just looking at to do the right thing and to give to share with you some color is, yeah, we are pretty proud that one of our service provider partners is actually working with us to put our, put our BR1 5G, our flagship 5G products into one of the best company in Hong Kong. That tells us, yeah, if that's the right thing to do, we'll do it. There is no minimum margin, hardware gross margin that we're willing to accept. No, that's not the case. Because again, we want to see the market, and we want to ramp up the scale 'cause we see a bunch of benefit to ramp up scale.
Okay, thanks. In the U.S., how do you see sales impacted by emerging regulations like the Trade Agreements Act and Build America, Buy America Act that contractually limits end users ability to procure networking solution?
Okay. Again, is I think is, we are all here because we are sitting in the Hong Kong office. I want to share that is we actually have a couple of interesting projects that is related to the transportation industry in the USA, and we are doing great. That is. We don't see any problems with anything like this. Again, is, we are here just because we are here. That is, we have a lot of team members that is in Toronto, Lithuania, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia. Yeah. I don't see this as actually that much of a problem. Again, I think is that this thing is.
Subjective.
Yeah. This is very subjective. We are not concerned about that.
The large growth in recurring service revenue was indirectly caused by a unique steep growth in 2021 hardware sales. 2022 shows a slower growth in wireless routers and at the same time inventory increased a lot. How do you reach a sustainable hardware growth? How is sales of 3% to make sure recurring income with the highest margin keeps growing as it did last year?
Yes, Paul, I think it's, you are based on the assumption that people are buying the router and then is using one subscriptions. You know, we are adding a lot of very new interesting features, including is the 5G/LTE data plan and things like that. Also the InTouch . Is, you have not put into the consideration that when the existing devices are adding to these new features, so then the people will just add more subscriptions on that. I think, I think it's, this is not entirely related to how much devices we sold in 2022. It is related to a order base of existing installation base.
It's also interesting that in 2022, we saw 33% growth in the number of devices with a subscription. Then the subscription dollar amounts increased 49%. That extra around 15% came from somewhere. We did not increase our prices. I think that really came from, you know, more existing users subscribing to our services.
Yes. Again, these are the convenience features. Also, with our SpeedFusion Connect, that is actually based related to the consumption as well. The SFC, SpeedFusion Connect Pro Pack and the SFC 5G/LTE, they are related to a consumption model.
There seems to be no more questions. yep. Thanks, Alex, for coming.
Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call. We'll see you again in July.
Yeah. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.