Hello, this is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome to Vecima Networks Q4 fiscal 2022 earnings conference call and webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Analysts and institutional investors who wish to join the question queue, simply press star and 1 on your touch tone phone. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and 0 on their telephone. Presenting today on behalf of Vecima Networks are Sumit Kumar, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dale Booth, Chief Financial Officer.
Today's call will begin with executive commentary on Vecima's financial and operational performance for the Q4 and year-end fiscal 2022 results. Lastly, the call will finish with a question and answer period for analysts and institutional investors. The press release announcing the company's Q4 and year-end fiscal 2022 results, as well as detailed supplemental investor information, are posted on Vecima's website at www.vecima.com under the Investor Relations heading. The highlights provided in this call should be understood in conjunction with the company's audited annual consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes for the years ended June 30, 2022 and 2021. Certain statements in this conference call and webcast may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements.
These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding management's intentions, beliefs or current expectations with respect to market and general economic conditions, future sales and revenue expectations, future costs and operating performance. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict or are beyond our control. A number of important factors could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements.
These factors include, but are not limited to, the current significant general economic uncertainty and credit and financial market volatility, including the impact of COVID-19 and the distinctive characteristics of Vecima's operations and industry and customer demand that may have a material impact on or constitute risk factors in respect of Vecima's future financial performance, as set forth under the heading Risk Factors in the company's Annual Information Form dated September 22, 2022, a copy of which is available at www.sedar.com. In addition, although the forward-looking statements in this earnings call are based on what management believes are reasonable assumptions, such assumptions may prove to be incorrect. Consequently, attendees should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. In addition, these forward-looking statements relate to the date on which they are made.
Vecima disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kumar to proceed with his remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Fiscal 2022 was a year of outstanding momentum for Vecima as we captured the first wave of the global industry transition to distributed access architecture. I'll start today with a review of some of the financial and operational highlights of a remarkable year. Dale will provide more detail on our financial results, and then I'll return to talk about what lies ahead for Vecima. I'm very proud to report that fiscal 2022 brought another year of record-breaking top-line performance as we achieved the best quarterly and full year sales results in our 34-year history. Q4 sales climbed 70% to CAD 60 million year-over-year, while full year sales grew by an exciting 50.4% to a record CAD 186.8 million.
Importantly, we leveraged this growth on the bottom line with profitability momentum outpacing what we achieved even on the top line. On a full year basis, gross profit climbed by 59%. Adjusted EBITDA rose significantly to CAD 31 million, up a remarkable 152% or 2.5x Higher than a year ago. Adjusted net earnings ramped to CAD 0.41 per share. That's a year-over-year increase of CAD 0.51 per share. These are simply excellent results and even more so while in the presence of ongoing global supply chain challenges. The distinctive success of our strategies and tactics for managing supply chain constraints is evident not just in our very strong top-line growth, but also in a gross margin that bucked sector company trends and strengthened 2.6% to 48.2% in fiscal 2022.
Our record results were led by our Video and Broadband Solutions segment, and more specifically, of course, by the dramatic growth in our Entra DAA sales. As you know, Entra momentum was building coming into the year, and it continued extensively as operators worldwide increased their capital investment into DAA. Our total customer engagements for Entra climbed to 91 during fiscal 2022, up from 71 at the start of the year. Quarter- by- quarter, Entra sales grew from CAD 16.6 million in Q4 last year to CAD 40 million in Q4 this year. We ended fiscal 2022 with full year Entra sales of CAD 107.3 million. That was 2.5x The Entra sales last year.
I wanna comment on Entra's broader growth trajectory, which tells a story of not only our sales tempo, but also highlights how compelling the product family has become to Vecima. In fiscal 2020, when we first commenced sales of our new DAA products, Entra generated sales of about CAD 5.3 million, and that represented about 6% of our total sales that year. 1 year later, Entra sales had climbed to 42.6 Million, lifting Vecima's full year FY 2021 sales to CAD 124 million. Now, at the end of fiscal 2022, Entra sales of CAD 107.3 million have propelled full year consolidated sales to CAD 187 million, driving our top line growth to a striking 50%+. This is just the beginning of what we see ahead for Entra.
The industry is still in the early innings of DAA adoption. DAA is expected to become a multi-billion-dollar market as operators worldwide undertake this transformational evolution of broadband access networks that we believe are the very foundation of global progress. The industry is heading into this journey with Vecima widely recognized as a leading global DAA technology partner. All of this strongly cements our multi-year strategy to provide not just the industry's most interoperable and technically differentiated offering of DAA technology, but also the most complete breadth of fiber and cable access solutions. I'm pleased to report that we continue to build on our portfolio with multiple new DAA achievements in fiscal 2022. Just to provide a few examples, we announced the world's first generic access platform, or GAP node, which sets the industry standard for unified access with a modular platform.
We also introduced a new generation remote MAC-PHY cable access module, the most flexible and highest capacity cable access platform on the market. In partnership with Charter Communications, we demonstrated the reality of 10G DOCSIS 4.0 over hybrid fiber-coax cable access networks, clocking blistering symmetrical downstream and upstream speeds in the process. Then we went on to beat our own record. Even as we've been capturing the first wave of industry DAA adoption, we've been preparing to lead the next. This is truly an extraordinary moment in time for Entra and, of course, for Vecima. Looking now at other contributors to our fiscal 2022 performance, within the Video and Broadband Solutions segment, FY '22 is another excellent year for our Terrace QAM commercial video hospitality platform.
We saw significant continued uptake during the year as our lead T1 customer continued to expand its hospitality footprint while preparing again for a migration to the next generation Terrace IQ platform. In our content delivery and storage segment, we maintained strong annual sales performance of CAD 43.5 million, in line with FY 2021 results. This was achieved despite supply chain and material shortages and pandemic-related project delays that slowed some industry-wide transitions to IPTV. The year also brought some important achievements for that segment, including winning and executing the largest IPTV deals in our history. On the innovation front, we continued to advance our MediaScale family with multiple product enhancements. Another highlight of the year was demonstrating our standards compliant Open Caching solution.
As I mentioned last quarter, Open Caching is a significant new development for our service provider and streaming customers because it delivers video that looks and performs better on consumer viewing screens, while at the same time offering compelling business advantages to both streaming providers and operators. We believe Open Caching is an important component of the future of video streaming, and we're continuing to lay the groundwork for it in partnership with leading global content and service providers. In Telematics, we continued to build on the segment's profitable recurring revenue contribution as we broaden deployments to municipal government customers. We also expanded our presence in the movable assets tracking market. We added 39 new asset tracking customers in fiscal 2022, and more than doubled the total number of movable assets we monitor in the year to over 23,000 asset tags.
In all aspects, fiscal 2022 was a pivotal year for Vecima, and we ended it in a very strong financial position. Even after investing heavily in R&D and organic growth and returning cash to our investors in the form of regular dividends of CAD 0.22 per share, we ended the year with CAD 12.9 million in cash and a very strong CAD 58.6 million in working capital. This positions us well to support the significant new growth we see ahead. I'll tell you more about that in just a few minutes. First, though, I'll turn the call over to Dale to provide our financial overview. Dale?
Thank you, Sumit. For the purposes of this call, we assume that everyone has seen the Q4 and fiscal year 2022 results, news release, MD&A, and our financial statements posted on Vecima's website. I will present the relevant numbers and discussions around overall results, market segments, operational expenses, and the balance sheet. Starting with consolidated sales, for the 3 months ended June 30, 2022, we generated sales of CAD 60 million. This was an increase of 70% over the CAD 35.3 million in Q4 last year, and an increase of 18% from CAD 50.9 million in Q3 fiscal 2022. The year-over-year increase reflects a sharp increase in product sales from the Video and Broadband Solutions segment, driven by our new Entra family of products, partially offset by lower sales in the Content Delivery and Storage segment.
Within the Video and Broadband Solutions segment, for the Q4 of fiscal 2022, we generated sales of CAD 49.4 million. This was up 111% from the CAD 23.5 million in Q4 last year and 34% higher than the CAD 37 million in sales last quarter. Further deployments of our next generation DAA products contributed Q4 Entra revenue of CAD 40 million, up 141% from CAD 16.6 million in Q4 fiscal 2021, and up 30% from CAD 30.8 million in Q3 fiscal 2022. In all, Entra DAA platforms are now being sold to 45 operators across 6 continents. Commercial video product sales grew to CAD 8.8 million, an increase of 31% from CAD 6.7 million in Q4 fiscal 2021 and 43% from CAD 6.2 million in Q3 fiscal 2022.
The increase in commercial video sales reflects continued strong demand for our Terrace QAM platform as operators continued their commercial rollout for the current generation. This was partially offset by the anticipated tapering of demand for Terrace family products, including the TC600E. Content Delivery and Storage segment sales were CAD 9.2 million in Q4, down 12% from the CAD 10.4 million in the Q4 of fiscal 2021 and 26% lower than the CAD 12.5 million in Q3 of this year. This lumpiness reflects the timing of large orders, and these quarterly sales variances are typical for the CDS segment. Sales for fiscal 2022 were additionally impacted by pandemic-related project delays as well as supply chain and material shortages. The total CDS segment sales included CAD 4.5 million in product revenue and CAD 4.7 million in services revenue.
Turning to the Telematics segment, sales in the Q4 were at CAD 1.3 million, slightly lower than the CAD 1.4 million in the same period last year and in Q3 of this year. Gross margin for the Q4 was at 48%, with a gross profit of CAD 28.5 million, an increase of 90% from the CAD 15 million in Q4 fiscal 2021 and up 19% from last quarter's CAD 24 million. Gross margin was within our targeted range of 48%-52%. Gross margin was up from the 42% achieved in Q4 fiscal 2021 and from the 47% last quarter. The improvement in gross margin reflects a higher margin product mix, foreign exchange improvements and higher sales in the VBS segment. These gains were slightly offset by lower CDS sales and supply chain issues during the period.
Video and Broadband Solutions segment gross profit grew 147% to CAD 23 million from the CAD 9.3 million in the same period last year and 42% with the CAD 16.2 million in gross profit last quarter. Gross profit margin of 47% was significantly higher as compared to 40% in Q4 fiscal 2021 and slightly higher from Q3 fiscal 2022 gross profit margin of 44%. The year-over-year increase in gross margin reflects significantly higher sales together with a higher margin product mix. Gross profit in the Content Delivery and Storage segment for Q4 decreased slightly by 2% to CAD 4.6 million, with a gross margin of 50% from the CAD 4.7 million and 45% in Q4 fiscal 2021.
On a sequential quarterly basis, CDS gross profit was 33% lower than the CAD 6.9 million generated last quarter. The year-over-year changes in gross profit and gross margin reflect a lower percentage of high-margin software sales in the product mix and a decrease in sales in the current quarter as compared to the prior year quarter. In the Telematics segment, gross profit in the Q4 was CAD 0.9 million, with a gross margin of 66%, similar to the CAD 1 million in gross profit and 68% gross margin in Q4 fiscal 2021, and the gross profit of CAD 0.9 million and 63% gross margin last quarter. The year-over-year decrease in gross margin reflects higher product costs in the current quarter. Turning to Q4 operating expenses, the notable changes year-over-year were as follows.
R&D expenses increased to CAD 11.4 million from CAD 5.4 million in Q4 fiscal 2021, primarily reflecting the hiring of additional R&D employees, the amortization of deferred development costs, higher licensing and subcontracting costs, as well as decreased capitalization costs. We continue to invest in research and development to support the launch of new products. Until these new products are commercialized, development costs are deferred to future periods. Sales and marketing expenses for the Q4 increased to CAD 6 million from CAD 3.6 million in the same period last year.
This increase was due to higher staffing costs as well as increased travel, entertainment, and trade show costs as travel and business restrictions related to COVID-19 were eased. G&A expenses increased to CAD 6.5 million in Q4 2022 from CAD 4.3 million in Q4 fiscal 2021, primarily reflecting the additional staffing, ERP implementation, software licensing, and subcontracting costs. Other expense was CAD 0.8 million in Q4 fiscal 2022, a decrease from other income of CAD 1.5 million in Q4 fiscal 2021 due to US federal grant credits received in fiscal 2021, compared to an impairment of deferred development costs in the current period in our CDS segment. Total OpEx in Q4 increased to CAD 24.7 million from CAD 11.6 million during the same period last year.
This increase primarily reflects higher operating expenses in the Video and Broadband Solutions and the Content Delivery and Storage segments. Video and Broadband Solutions operating expenses increased to CAD 15.8 million from CAD 6.1 million in Q4 fiscal 2021. The CAD 9.7 million year-over-year increase primarily reflects additional expenses for research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative activities, all related to sales growth. Content Delivery and Storage operating expenses were higher at CAD 8 million in Q4 fiscal 2022 as compared to CAD 4.9 million in Q4 fiscal 2021. Increases reflect year-over-year higher expenditure on research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative activities related to planned sales growth. I note that reported R&D expense in a period is typically different than the actual expenditure. That's because certain R&D expenditures are deferred until product commercialization.
Adjusting for deferrals, amortization of deferred development costs, and income tax credits, actual R&D investment for the quarter increased to CAD 12.7 million or 21% of sales from CAD 8.9 million or 25% of sales in the same period last year. The increase reflects higher staffing costs and higher costs for software licensing, subcontracting, and prototyping as our next-generation product families move closer to full-scale commercial deployment. In our bottom line results, we reported an operating income of CAD 3.8 million in Q4 fiscal 2022 as compared to CAD 3.4 million in Q4 fiscal 2021. The CAD 0.4 million increase was mainly due to an increase in contribution from the Video and Broadband Solutions segment from next-generation Entra DAA products, partially offset by an increased operating cost from the CDS segment.
Adjusted EBITDA grew to CAD 11.1 million from CAD 5.7 million in the prior year quarter and up from CAD 8.1 million last quarter. The Q4 foreign exchange gain was CAD 1.4 million, compared to a foreign exchange loss of CAD 0.7 million in the prior year period. Net income from continuing operations for the quarter was CAD 3.5 million or CAD 0.16 per share, from a net income of CAD 1.4 million or CAD 0.06 per share in Q4 fiscal 2021. Overall, a very strong quarter. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the Q4 with CAD 12.9 million in cash, up from CAD 10.6 million in the third quarter. Working capital increased to CAD 58.6 million from CAD 54.9 million in Q3 fiscal 2022 and CAD 44.8 million in Q4 last year.
We note that working capital balances can also be subject to significant swings from quarter- quarter. Our product shipments are lumpy, reflecting the requirements of our major customers. Other timing issues like contracts with greater than 30-day payment terms also affect working capital, particularly if shipments are back-ended for a quarter. Finally, cash flow provided by operations for the Q4 was CAD 10.4 million, as compared to cash flow provided by operations of CAD 12.9 million during the same period last year. The CAD 2.5 million decrease reflects a CAD 7.6 million decrease in cash flow from non-cash working capital, driven primarily by the building of inventory to support growth and minimize supply chain constraints, partially offset by a CAD 5.1 million increase in operating cash flow.
Just to summarize, another strong quarter with continued sales growth and solid gross margin and adjusted EBITDA in the midst of challenges due to the global supply chain. Now back to Sumit.
Thank you, Dale. Looking at what lies ahead for Vecima, we see multiple growth engines driving the future. In our Video and Broadband Solutions segment, of course, our Entra products have captured a clear edge in the vast DAA and fiber broadband markets, and we are very well positioned to leverage and build on this lead. We have the world's most comprehensive DAA portfolio covering both fiber and cable access, and we've built some of the industry's best technology. We've also been selected as the technology partner to a growing list of global MSOs, including a number of the world's largest cable operators. These operators are increasingly expanding scale deployment. We expect market demand and sales of our Entra DAA products to continue to ramp up in fiscal 2023.
This outlook is supported by a very broad order book that provides excellent visibility into customer expectations and growth for the year ahead. I remind you again that this is still just the opening act for DAA. There's more to come, not just from our existing Entra portfolio as we continue to capture this first wave of DAA adoption, but also from our new technologies and the subsequent waves that we expect to follow. In other parts of the VBS segment, like before, we see continued solid demand for our current generation Terrace QAM, making way for the long-term migration to next generation Terrace IQ as our portfolio of commercial video and hospitality solutions remain essential for operators in their enterprise service bundles. In our content delivery and storage business, we anticipate moderate growth in fiscal 2023 as the macroeconomic challenges ease and demand momentum builds.
Over the longer term, we see higher growth potential in CDS. The IPTV and OTT streaming services markets are on pace to significantly grow in the next several years and will depend on reliable and scalable solutions like those provided by our MediaScale portfolio. We also see significant long-term growth potential for our newer Open Caching solutions to evolve into an important driver of CDS performance. Finally, in our telematics business, we anticipate consistent incremental growth from the fleet tracking market and increasing demand for our newer movable asset tracking services. Overall, we see very exciting future for Vecima as our multiyear investment, technology and growth strategy is realized. My 1 note of caution remains the ongoing challenges related to current global supply chain disruptions that could temper our near-term growth or margins. Again, we're managing these pressures exceptionally well today.
Overall, we're highly confident in our market position and in Vecima's ability to capture the major opportunities that lie ahead of us as we evolve the world's networks to deliver on the promise of limitless broadband connectivity and entertainment. That concludes our formal comments for today, and we'll now be happy to take questions. Operator?
Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session for analysts and institutional investors. To join the question queue, you may press star then1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Our first question is from Steven Li with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Sumit, can you give us an update on supply chain? Is it improving? Also, inflation impact on labor and components? Thanks.
Yeah. The supply chain, you know, is still in a constrained state. We see that on a global basis. We are seeing, you know, some signs of improvement for sure. I think 1 of the most important factors I've talked about is that, you know, a year and a half to 2 years ago, we had this step function change in lead times from these 16-20 weeks, the old normal to the new normal 52-week plus lead times.
Now we've crossed over the change that represents in terms of having our pipeline of orders in place based on very excellent visibility from our customers that you know are working with us as strong partners to manage this and provide us forecasting visibility out consistent with some of the lead time scenarios. As we kind of approach calendar 2023 and you know start to get into those orders that we've had in place for a long time, that gives us a lot of momentum in the supply chain side. Meanwhile, we are seeing certainly you know as again going through 2023 signs of improvement generally speaking from the supply chain. You know of course it remains in the short term very important. We're spending a great amount of time managing it.
We're being very agile about it and, you know, that's been a big part of our capability to grow like we have. You know, inflation side, we've seen over the last year, significant cost increases in parts. We've been able to, you know, modify our designs to make substitutions where necessary and to partner with our customers to mitigate that. We're comfortable you see that represented in, you know, what the margin profile has been. You know, reminding everyone that I expected 2%-3% headwinds relative to our target range. As we entered fiscal 2022, we outperformed that, you know, by delivering right at our target range of getting in there. I think, you know, we're doing really well to manage that.
Got it. Sumit, when you said you're still in a constrained state, so does that mean you left revenues on the table in Q4 as well?
Certainly, you know, of course, there's a backlog and, you know, the backlog across time is very large. Yes, there were orders in Q4 that had we had more material, we certainly would have been well-placed to and well-positioned to increase the sales.
All right, great. I know you've provided this metric before, but how much of your engagement today is MAC-PHY, EPON?
Yeah. Just to take a quick peek at that 1 more time. Our remote PHY is about 25%, our EPON's about 25%, and MAC-PHY is about 50% of the 91 engagements we have. You know, we have very balanced, you know, distribution, and that speaks to our kind of capability to address the full spectrum of the distributed access, you know, ecosystem, relative to where the operators wanna go on that journey as they move to 10G services. You know, you're seeing the engagements well diversified there.
Thanks, guys. Very solid quarter. Thanks.
Thanks, Steven.
Our next question, Acumen Capital. Please go ahead.
I assume that was me. I think I, my phone cut out there. That's Jim here with Acumen. Congrats on the quarter, guys.
Hey, Jim. Thanks, Jim. Thank you.
Just to kind of a follow on, I guess, to that last question from Steven, noticing your 3 largest customers now exceeding CAD 100 million in revenue for the fiscal year up significantly. Just kinda wanna get an idea of, you know, what drove that growth amongst those 3 customers. Was it just wider engagement, wider deployment, or, you know, a shift in any of the product sales?
Yeah, I think, you know, we are seeing wider engagement scale up in some of those deployments. You know, 1 of those particular leading customers in particular, you know, we have multiple, Entra products in various categories of, you know, their services that they're ramping up in parallel. The fiber broadband has been really incredible with that, 1 of those leading T1 , and what they've been able to do to provide broadband equity by expanding their network to cover rural populations in North America. That's been really material for us, and we're, you know, we're showing ourselves to be a very important fiber access vendor, which is great. You know, that's a step in the journey to for operators to go in that direction in the long term.
As we do, it's happening now with some of the funding that's in place, you know, Vecima's penetrating that very effectively. Another 1 of those customers is scaling their DAA deployments. They've got a Remote PHY model today. They may evolve that in the DOCSIS 4.0 next generation towards MAC-PHY or continue with the Remote PHY. Again, the flexibility is important to us, so we're seeing on the cable access some real strength with that other leading customer that you see there in those top ones for us.
Okay, that's great. Noticed Alberta added to their rural deployment fund. Just help us understand how that potentially works on your end. Also I guess the rest of the government subsidies and programs, what you're seeing today, or anything new in the last number of months.
Yeah, you may have cut out just for the start of that. Can you repeat on the increase that you saw?
Yeah, sorry. Just, yeah, the government of Alberta added to their rural fund, I think another CAD 50 million or something like that.
Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah, we're seeing that quite widely, and it speaks to, of course, you know, this wide global recognition that, you know, broadband is essential. It's, you know, a key element of how society functions today. We need equity and access to broadband, and many jurisdictions are focused on that. You know, we are seeing, of course, that our capability to provide solutions there, our 10G Remote OLT EPON for fiber to the home solution, for example, in the node form factor, that's very, you know, efficient for cable operators in particular to deploy, to tap into some of those funding initiatives to grow and expand their networks to cover rural areas in particular, where some of that funding is directed.
You know, it relates to how as we've you know built the product strategy that we're allowing fiber deployments to embed almost natively in how we control and how we provision even the cable networks. It's a very nice evolution for a cable operator in particular, as they're looking to serve fiber to the home in the greenfield for the business as usual and for the funding program. That's been a very good movement for Vecima.
Lastly, I don't recall the name of the expo. It was just ending, and just maybe any key takeaways or any sort of product developments or initiatives that came out of that recent expo.
Yeah. I think 1 of the highlights, of course, is that, you know, Charter showed a DOCSIS 4.0 demonstration. There's a press release related to that, you know, in a private booth. We were one of the vendor partners that were involved there. With our remote MAC-PHY node, we were showing, you know, with 6 amplifiers behind the node, which is very important to how practical deploying DOCSIS 4.0 will be in the future with the FDD or ESD (Extended Spectrum DOCSIS) extended spectrum, taking spectrum frequencies up to 1.8.
It gets a bit technical, but you know, the ability to place DOCSIS 4.0 DAA node at the location where nodes are today and still have the cascade of amplifiers behind it and provide symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds, you know, 8.5 downstream, 5.5 upstream with 6 amplifiers, it's very powerful, you know, indication of how the industry can move towards 10G over the cable plant. That was very, very important. For us, you know, we also announced an expansion to our fiber access products with our 10G XGS-PON shelf that we announced at the show. You know, that is as important as the fiber broadband continues to grow. You know, some of the operators are looking.
That's effectively different management standard for fiber to the home that we've brought into the portfolio with that new product that we introduced and some increased density as well. Those are some of the highlights from the show for us.
Okay, that's it for me. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thanks, Jim.
Once again, analysts and institutional investors who would like to ask a question should press Star and 1 on their touch-tone phone. We will pause for a moment so any additional callers may join the queue. Our next question comes from Jesse Pytlak with Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. Just on, the cable and fiber access business, can you just give us a sense of how far along are your earliest customers with respect to their ultimate deployments?
Yeah. You know, we think that things are still very, quite early. You know, sometimes we say it's not even the early innings, it's a warm-up. You know, there's been heightened activity. Of course, you see that in our results. But this is, you know, a multi-year, you know, multi-billion-dollar investment cycle that's going to take place. First moving to DAA at scale, then, you know, starting the evolution to DOCSIS 4.0, continuing with the fiber build-outs and whatnot. You know, so things are relatively early and as you know, of course, we've talked about the supply chain has put somewhat of a ceiling on, you know, output.
Even though we've been growing fantastically, despite that, there's still, you know, more to be done there in terms of catching up with the native demand that is actually happening today from the operators. We do feel like they're quite early in the long-term cycle, the market cycle that's going to take place to evolve the networks for multi-gigabit.
Okay. Thank you. Just, you know, engagements are up to 91, obviously a very, very impressive number. Is there some level where we should expect for this to begin to naturally plateau? You know, second to that, just on customer orders, can you just confirm if you had any sales conversions following the quarter or would it still be at 45 today?
Yeah, I'm not gonna report on the conversions until next quarter, Jesse, but you know, that's continuously happening. We've had to, of course, manage the supply chain side as well in terms of new customer adoption for deployment. That's, you know, relatively important to align our availability of product to new customer adoption. I'm not gonna dial that in a little much more right now. You know, 91 engagements, you know, that's continuously growing. It's up from, I think 50 in a year or so. There are, you know, quite literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of cable operators globally. You know, we look at that 91 as when we see the coverage of some of the tier ones, that's very important. Many of them are already in there, in terms of that count.
You know that we see the potential for that engagement level to continue to rise, for us, but we're very pleased with the makeup of the 91 today.
Okay. Just last 1 for me. Obviously you had a substantial build in working capital in fiscal 2022. How should we kind of be thinking about the working capital requirements, and the evolution of it through fiscal 2023?
Yeah. You know, of course, growing at these 50% type rates as we are is 1 factor. Managing 52-week lead times on supply chain is another factor that we very much, you know, with the visibility, the order kind of commitments we have and the forecast commitments we have from customers, you know, we need to continue to fuel our working capital so to fuel this growth and to fuel our ability to respond to customer needs. You know, we feel comfortable that, you know, we're well positioned.
We've got lots of, you know, access to capital as we need, but, you know, it's working capital for us is really, you know, very strong, you know, money in the bank inventory there that we're building, and it's helping us to grow like we are, and manage the supply chain. As we see the trend going forward, we do expect to have, you know, more inventory commitments. Again, the growth is consistent with the rates that we've been showing.
Okay. Understood. That's all for me. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Jesse.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Ole Prsa, a private investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, gentlemen. Very good quarter.
Thanks, Ole.
Thanks, Ole.
There's 1 thing that I noticed that Dale mentioned about CAD 12 million in research and development that was brought forward because of you only spent you use or you use that when you're ready to sell the product. Is that correct?
The CAD 12.7 million is really the cash R&D spend that we had in fiscal 2022, is the way to look at that, Ole.
Okay.
The number on our income statement is before or has that capitalized amount going to our balance sheet. What I was reporting on the CAD 12.7 was the actual cash spend. I hope that helps in the quarter.
Okay, I understand. Does it mean that you're gonna be spending that type of money on research and development going forward each quarter?
Yes. Yes, it does.
Okay. That's
That's investing in our new product lines.
Maybe I misunderstood what you were saying. That's my fault.
No, that's fine.
Yeah. Anyway, you have this proposal that you may be raising a lot of money, and I think you filed on SEDAR.
Mm-hmm.
Do you see that taking place this year or perhaps next year?
I'm not gonna be able to comment very specifically. Of course, we have, you know, the vehicle in place. You know, the market situation is what it is. We're growing.
Yeah.
Fantastically. You know, it's important for us.
There's no imminent need for it.
There's no imminent need and you know that's there if you know the valuation metrics make sense and you know we wanna put some liquidity out there. Yeah.
Right. Now, the Telematics, what kind of revenue you get from the Telematics? Is that getting to the point where it might even be worth a spin-off or something, or is that a possibility?
Yeah. Telematics sales of somewhere around CAD 5.5 million recurring revenue. You know, nice bottom line on that business as well in the EBITDA margin. You know, and strong asset and you know, we're committed to it. You know, as the opportunity arises, you know, we would be open to different options on the business. You know, I think we're happy to grow it as well. We're doing great on municipal government customers and asset tracking. Like the rest of the Vecima business, of course, it's at a much smaller scale, but you know, our R&D investments are bearing fruit and we like the metrics and the recurring revenue of the business.
Okay. All right. Well, thanks.
Okay, Ole. Thank you.
Thanks, Ole.
As there appears to be no further questions, this concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.