Good day, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Minim's Q4 and full year 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. I'd like to now hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. James Carbonara from Hayden IR. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Once again, welcome to Minim's Q4 and full year 2021 earnings call. With me on the call are Gray Chynoweth, Chief Executive Officer, Nicole Zheng, President and Chief Marketing Officer, Mehul Patel, Chief Financial Officer, and Dustin Tacker, former interim chief accounting officer and current controller and vice president accounting. As a reminder, all materials for today's live presentation are available on the company's investor relations website at ir.minim.com. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding the future, including expected revenue, operating margins, expenses, and future business outlook. Actual results or trends could materially differ from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements.
For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, please see risk factors detailed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K, contained in subsequent filed reports on Forms 10-Q, as well as in other reports that the company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please note, too, that today's call may include the use of non-GAAP numbers that management utilizes to analyze the company's performance. A reconciliation of such non-GAAP numbers to the most comparable GAAP measures is available in our most recent press release, as well as in our periodic filings with the SEC. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Gray Chynoweth, CEO of Minim. Gray, please proceed.
Thanks, James. Good morning and welcome to Minim's Q4 and full year 2021 conference call. Let's jump right in. For the year, we continued to outperform the market on growth, despite not performing as well as we had hoped in Q4. For 2021, Minim's GAAP revenue was $55.4 million, up 16% over 2020, resulting in a three-year CAGR of 21%. By way of context, the market leader's 2021 revenue dropped 7% compared to 2020, resulting in a three-year CAGR of 3%. With this context, I want to share how we believe we are beating the market and our approach to sustaining outperformance in the face of headwinds. Three points of strength that helped drive outperformance relative to the market were the following. First, we delivered high-value products to the market.
Our ASP grew 7% in 2021 over the prior year, up to $105 from $98. Second, we drove tremendous sales online. The amazon.com sales channel grew 57% in 2021 over the prior year. Third, we captured market share. As an example, on amazon.com, we grew dollar share by 10 points from 22% to 32%, putting us in second position on a full year basis. Given that I've mentioned Amazon, I believe it is worth calling out how important the marketplace is for the consumer electronics e-commerce segment. According to TraQline, in the four quarters ending September 2021, Amazon took home 41.6% of the consumer electronics unit share, with the next two players capturing 13.8% and 11% respectively.
In our own analysis using multiple data sources, we estimate Amazon comprises over one-third of the modem and gateway category on a dollar share basis in tight competition with Best Buy. While our growth with Best Buy didn't keep up with our growth on Amazon, we did increase dollar sales with Best Buy by 13% in 2021. While we outperformed the market for the year on revenue growth, we experienced significant macro level headwinds in Q4 that impacted revenue growth and as a result, adjusted EBITDA performance. The biggest headwinds came from supply chain issues. The impacts were both direct, delaying our ability to bring new products to market and increasing component costs and indirect, disrupting buying patterns at our retail and distribution partners.
In addition to supply chain headwinds, other headwinds to performance included the settling of consumer demand to a level above pre-pandemic levels, but below the pandemic peak and inventory rebalancing by our distribution partners. We plan to overcome these headwinds and continue to outperform the market by diversifying suppliers at all levels of the supply chain, increasing the number of retail and distribution partners in the U.S., increasing our U.S. market share in our primary market segment, cable modems and gateways, expanding beyond the U.S. market and becoming more competitive in the mesh market in the U.S. and globally. Turning to our bottom line, our gross margin improved by 31.6% for 2021, an increase of 328 basis points over 2020. Adjusted EBITDA for 2021 came in at -$4.5 million compared to $1.7 million for 2020.
I will note that as part of our continued focus on sustainable growth, we tempered our investments in R&D and market entry in Q4 with an eye to increasing them as headwinds to revenue and profitability lessen. Turning to a view of the balance sheet, we exited the year with $13.1 million in cash and $32.5 million in inventory. In both cases, this represents a dramatically improved position when compared to the end of 2020, which saw us end with $1.6 million in cash and $16.5 million in inventory.
Given the dynamic supply chain environment, we continue to monitor our inventory levels closely, seeking to hedge both the risks of not having enough inventory to meet market demands and the risks of having inventory levels that put pressure on liquidity. Stepping back from our operational performance, I will next turn to progress on our transformation efforts, which began with the merger of Minim and Zoom Telephonics in late 2020. Our new vision, making home networks safe and supportive for everyone, guides our new mission: to develop and distribute intelligent connectivity software that delivers frequent network updates, helpful apps, extensive personalization options, and a delightful interface. Given the increasing awareness and concern about cybersecurity attacks and the continued shift to hybrid working models, we feel Minim's vision and mission are more relevant than ever. Three work streams are driving this transformation. First, deliver value to consumers with intelligent products.
We've already made great headway here, increasing the number of intelligent products in our portfolio from one to five in 2021, and setting a course to reach 100,000 Minim intelligent networks in 2022. This growth resulted in corresponding revenue growth. This past year saw a 10x increase in intelligent product revenue over 2020, and we have more growth planned for 2022. Second, deliver value to consumers with software, regardless of where or how they connect to the Internet. This is a big goal for 2022 that Nicole will discuss shortly in our product roadmap. Third, deliver value to consumers through innovative software upgrade features and product upsells initiated in our mobile app. On this front, we recently became the first home networking product company to add live in-app chat support with the MotoSync app powered by Minim.
The new functionality has already improved our customer service operations, achieving a 92% customer satisfaction rating, about 4% higher than the rating for phone support, and reducing time to resolution of tickets by 35%. We also recently launched a feature called Issue Tracer, which helps users troubleshoot connection issues. Next, I want to call out the amazing new team members that we have brought on board since our last earnings call in November. Bill Wallace, our new VP of Hardware, brings with him extensive experience earned as the VP of Hardware at CommScope Veris. Lakshmi Kadiyala, our new VP of Software, brings with her extensive experience earned leading consumer mobile applications at Charles Schwab. Jeff Brosnan, Director, National Retail Sales, brings with him extensive experience earned driving retail sales at Philips. Of course, Mehul Patel, our new CFO, who joined us earlier this month.
He brings extensive experience in financial leadership and operational roles at Motorola, CommScope Veris, and Verifone. This new generation of leadership has the experience and the ambition to propel Minim's continued growth. I'm so thrilled to be working with them to deliver value for our company stockholders, our customers, and our crew. While it is not our normal practice, given the late timing of our Q4 earnings call, it makes sense to share some perspectives on how the business progressed in the first quarter of 2022. In short, we expect to continue to outperform the market on revenue growth, which in Q1 means a return to quarter-over-quarter growth. More specifically, we expect to significantly bounce back in revenue growth, with quarter-over-quarter growth coming in between 20% and 30%, comparing Q4 of 2021 to Q1 of 2022.
Also of note for Q1 has been the tapering of production levels as we experienced COVID-related supply chain disruptions in Asia and look to balance hedging against supply chain disruptions with the liquidity management. More specifically, this means that while we expect to see our cash position drop between the exit of Q4 and Q1, we expect to see an increase between the exit of Q1 and Q2. Up next, Nicole will give you a deeper glimpse into our product sales performance and a look ahead towards progress on software and intelligent product development in fiscal year 2022. Nicole?
Thanks, Gray. At the moment, our net sales revenue is predominantly composed of cable modem and modem router products, also known as gateways. Overall, we believe we have captured approximately 19% of the total U.S. market share in this category in 2021, up from 15% in 2020. This growth underscores our beating the market. We believe the category itself shrank by 10% in gross sales revenue in 2021 to approximately $350 million from the exceptional prior year at $389 million. Now for a deeper look, let's return to a discussion about product pricing. As Gray mentioned, we grew our ASP by 7% last year. This is mostly due to the growing sales of premium cable modem and gateway products.
The top three sellers for 2021 were the Motorola MB8611, MG8702, and MB8600, which made up 54% of total net sales. I'm proud to say that the Motorola MG8702 gateway was our first intelligent product to market as a combined company. In our last earnings call, we discussed an average price increase of 6% across 60% of our product portfolio. This increase was well aligned with market movements and kept our products in the upper mid-tier pricing position. In 2021, the industry saw an 8% increase in ASP in the home networking market. As planned, the new pricing has afforded us greater flexibility to run profitable promotions, which has shown positive results. Prior to fiscal year 2021, the company had not participated in Amazon events such as Black Friday.
As a result of our new marketing programming, Minim had an historic Black Friday and Cyber Monday, totaling $1.2 million in sales, almost tripling the previous high of $465,000 in 2020. This time last year, our Motorola modem and gateway products held the number three position in Amazon market share at 28%. Today, we are number one with an estimated 41% market share. I'm extremely proud of our e-commerce team for this exceptional performance, especially in the midst of a return to pre-pandemic consumer demand levels. Specifically, the industry saw a 10% decrease in cable modem and gateway sales in 2021 versus 2020, with a steeper decline in retail stores of 19%, according to our analysis of retail data by NPD and a leading Amazon analytics platform.
It is with this in mind that we turn to look at our retail performance in Q4 and full year 2021, which did not hold the same exciting picture as our Amazon channel. Considering all of our retailer channels, our market share remained consistent. As such, our sales in retail were subject to the decline in demand from 2020 as described. Our fourth quarter performance particularly suffered as retailers primarily purchased holiday inventory in the third quarter to hedge against any risk of supply chain disruption from their vendors. Now I'll turn to a look at a few specific product highlights. In 2021, we began our journey on a multi-year transformation to become a software-centered company. Throughout the year, we increased the number of intelligent products in our portfolio from one to five.
One of those intelligent products, the Motorola MG8702 DOCSIS 3.1 Gateway, made up for an impressive 15% of our net sales. Also last year, Minim launched the Motorola MH7600 mesh system on amazon.com. While Amazon, with its own mesh product, has proven to be a competitive marketplace for this category, we are encouraged that this product has sold 10 times more in volume in its launch versus its predecessor. We are making progress in growing awareness of Motorola mesh products and have recently launched this product in Best Buy and Walmart online. As we look ahead to 2022, we plan to launch 4 high-performance intelligent networking products. While we continue to improve the in-home Wi-Fi experience, we are also thinking bigger with an innovative product roadmap. It's going to be an exciting year as we embark on reimagining our mobile app experience on every Wi-Fi network.
Right now, you can purchase an intelligent Motorola product and download the motosync app. In the future, you will be able to use our mobile app on any network, regardless of hardware. What might this look like? On business travel, you might use the Minim app to search for the nearest Wi-Fi connection that supports ultra-high band metaverse conferencing because your hotel room simply isn't cutting it. On the app, you might find a coffee shop that has user reviews of gigabit speed, but you need to know if the coffee shop is overloaded with connections and if it's secure. It looks like a user has just run a Minim scan to find excellent performance and security, so you venture to this coffee shop and pay for access to this premium network, all in the Minim app.
When you're done, you rate your experience and contribute test results to get a couple of credits for your next paid connection through Minim. This is connectivity untethered, where work and home can be anywhere. We believe Minim can offer great value as a powerful Wi-Fi navigation system and even marketplace. But how do we get there? Last month, we announced our latest invention for registering and encrypting a user's Wi-Fi network data and credentials to a blockchain ledger accessible via a user's wallet. This was the first glimpse into our vision of a near future where Wi-Fi will become a measurable, shareable, and even monetizable utility. The signals we see include the increase of hybrid working and digital nomadism, the acceleration of metaverse development, the continued growth of mobile offloading to Wi-Fi networks, the growing success of the gaming industry, as well as 10G connectivity on the horizon.
By the end of the year, we will focus on making the motosync app available to Motorola networking buyers, cable modems included, for live health, diagnostics, and product recommendations for purchase on motorolanetwork.com. This goal also marks a philosophically greater milestone, which is establishing a mobile app-first user experience. By the end of the year, we will be able to market the Minim branded mobile app as a Wi-Fi companion to consumers. Features will include the ability to test a connection signal strength, speed, privacy, and security from anywhere and rate your experience. Premium upgrade features on the roadmap include threat blocking, live support on any network, parental controls, and VPN. Imagine being able to gift a live Wi-Fi support subscription to your parents.
In a nutshell, we are developing towards a new world where software user acquisition no longer depends on a hardware purchase and where any user acquisition can lead to a software feature and/or hardware purchase. It is the beginning of a much stronger data-driven customer relationship. Beyond our mobile app, our near-term roadmap also includes a focus on Minim OS development utilizing the TIP Open Wi-Fi platform. By visiting telecominfraproject.com, you will see that this project has support for some of the largest communications companies in the world. Last year, we brought firmware development in-house for the first time for improved quality and development time to market. Already this year, we were pleased to announce that our TISL and Wi-Fi support and interoperability have led to a partnership with two prominent ISPs in Indonesia and India.
As we look ahead in networking product development, we announced at CES our next two mesh products coming in the spring, summer of this year with high speed Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E performance, the Motorola Q11 and Motorola Q14. These products will challenge competitors in price and performance and bear the latest cutting-edge MotoSync. In modem and gateway categories, we have exciting product upgrade announcements this year and have DOCSIS 4.0 development to follow. Lastly, I'll turn to our sales channel expansion plans. In e-commerce, we were proud to launch motorolanetwork.com last year, which will be a flagship for upselling products in the MotoSync app. Furthermore, as of December 2021, Minim has pivoted our Walmart online model from leveraging a third-party distributor to our own use of walmart.com Seller Center, the second-largest e-commerce platform in the U.S.
This pivot has led to increased revenue by 38% for the three months between December 2021 and February 2022 compared to the prior three months. As for brick-and-mortar retail sales, we would like to see our dollar share expand this year as retailers continue to have an omni-channel edge and strong relationships with customers. As Gray mentioned, we recently onboarded a seasoned national retail sales director, Jeff Brosnan, who has already outperformed expectations in opening new and exciting relationships and a new product placement. I'll now turn to Mehul and Dustin for a review of our financial results. Mehul.
Thanks, Nicole. Before I hand the time over to Dustin to report on Q4 and FY 2021, I would like to take a moment to introduce myself, to thank the Minim team for the opportunity to join the company as its CFO, and to express my excitement about engaging with shareholders and the rest of our stakeholders as we continue our efforts towards achieving our business objectives. I joined Minim from Verifone, a fintech company that provides payment and commerce solutions to global retail brands, major financial institutions, and over 600,000 merchants. At Verifone, I led an international team of four major contract manufacturers to achieve material supply chain cost control during the pandemic. I look forward to leveraging this experience here at Minim as we continue to navigate many of the same issues.
Prior to joining Verifone, I spent 18 years working at Motorola, working across many groups, including telecom, consumer, premises equipment business unit, and participating in six acquisitions and saw company's name change from Motorola Home to Motorola Mobility, a Google company, to ARRIS, and in 2019 to CommScope. I'm also excited to bring these experiences, especially my deep knowledge of consumer connectivity products market and long-standing relationship with Motorola brand, to bear as Minim looks to drive continuous sustainable growth. Since joining the company earlier this month, I've only become more excited about opportunity we have to make home networks safe and supportive for everyone. With that, I will turn it over to Dustin to discuss our financial performance. Dustin.
Thank you, Mehul. A friendly reminder that the financials I will cover are depicted in the earnings presentation that has been posted on our website under the investor relations ir.minim.com. Driven by the issues described by Gray above, on an annual basis, our net revenue for 2021 totals $55.4 million, which is up 16% over 2020, with deferred revenue increasing to $736,000 as we exited the year. While we are pleased with our revenue growth for the year, we did see fourth quarter net sales shrink 24% year-over-year to $10.5 million, which is in the ballpark as Q4 2019 pre-pandemic levels. It is important to note that as Gray indicated, we do see a return to quarter-over-quarter growth in Q1 of 2022 when compared to Q4 of 2021.
For the year, our gross margin improved 328 basis points, up to 31.6% from 28.4%. We were pleased that our gross margins increased to 33% in Q4 from 30% in Q3. Despite the headwinds brought on by inflation and component cost increases, remained stable on a year-over-year basis. For the year, we posted an operating loss of $3.3 million, which compares with an operating loss of $4.8 million in 2020. The bulk of this loss occurred in Q4, which saw an operating loss of $3.1 million.
Below the line, net interest and other income was negative $300,000, which when combined with our operating results, resulted in a net loss of $3.6 million or -$0.09 per basic and diluted share for 2021. This compares with a net loss of $3.9 million or -$0.15 per basic and diluted share for 2020. For the quarter, we saw a net loss of $3.1 million or -$0.07 per basic and diluted share. This compares with a net loss of $1.2 million or -$0.04 per basic and diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2020. For the year, we saw adjusted EBITDA of -$4.5 million as compared to adjusted EBITDA of $1.7 million in 2020.
For the quarter, we saw adjusted EBITDA of -$3.1 million as compared to adjusted EBITDA of negative half a million in Q4 of 2020. As Gray noted, we remain very focused on improving these results and are encouraged by a return to quarter-over-quarter revenue growth in Q1 of 2022. Now for a look at the balance sheet. At the end of the fourth quarter, we had cash and cash equivalents of $13.1 million, an increase of $11.5 million compared to prior year-end, and a decrease of $6.3 million compared to the end of Q3 2021. The increase in cash on a year-over-year basis was due primarily to capital that we raised with our secondary offering and the disposition of the Zoom trademark, both of which occurred in August.
The decrease in cash on a quarter-over-quarter basis was driven by investments in areas discussed during our capital raise, investing in inventory and the R&D and sales efforts necessary to support our transformation. To that end, inventories rose $32.5 million at the close of 2021, compared to $16.5 million at the close of 2020, and of $23.2 million compared to the end of Q3. We do continue to monitor our production and inventory levels closely as we balance against both the risk of not having enough inventory to meet market demands and the risk of having inventory levels that put pressure on liquidity. As of the end of the year, we had outstanding debt of $5.1 million, which was drawn down on the company's $25 million line of credit.
This compares with $7.1 million in outstanding debt as of September 30th, 2021. With that, I turn it over to Gray to announce the dates for our Q1 earnings call and reschedule Investor Day before we open the line for questions.
Thank you, Nicole, Dustin, and welcome, Mehul. We are so excited to have you on the team. As Dustin mentioned, I'd like to announce that we expect to have our Q1 earnings call in the first half of May 2022 and to conduct an Investor Day during the first half of June 2022. In closing, I would like to reiterate that we continue to expect to outpace the market on revenue growth, which in Q1 means a return to quarter-over-quarter growth, that we will continue to balance hedging against supply chain disruptions with liquidity management, which in Q1 means tapering investments in inventory, and that we continue to make progress on our transformational efforts, which in Q1 means bringing thousands more intelligent networks under management and releasing important new software features. With that, operator, I'd like to open the line for questions.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. That's star one. Our first question will come from the line of Josh Nichols. Please proceed.
Yeah, thanks for taking my question. Understandably, I guess, clearly some challenges in the fourth quarter that you hit on. Can you provide a little bit more granularity on why the retail sales were down so much despite what seems like decent performance from Best Buy? Has that trend changed when you see what's going on thus far in the first quarter?
Yeah, I'll take that one. Thank you, Josh, for your voice. I would say that the buying patterns were really disrupted by supply chain issues, and I think that the nature of that disruption really occurred as a result of the headlines that you saw in August and September. I think it also occurred, you know, not at the industry leaders, but at kind of followers in the industry in terms of retail. As we've looked at the data, you know, kind of leaders in consumer electronics, Amazon and Best Buy, ended up performing much, much better than the people that were following them in that market segment.
I think that might have been due to the, you know, Omicron and the COVID restrictions that occurred kind of as you got towards the end of Q4 and the holiday buying season. You know, I think that we've talked about a return to quarter-over-quarter growth and, you know, that suggests that we have experienced a return to improved retail performance. As I did note, though, I do think that while we will see improved performance on a quarter-over-quarter basis and that the total market is larger than it was pre-pandemic, there has been a somewhat, you know, subsiding from the very peak of the shutdowns and investments in home networks. You know, that hopefully gives you a little bit of additional color.
I'm happy to go into more specifics if you have any. Nicole, did you have something you wanted to add?
Sure. I'd say the last trend that we're seeing is that the retailers that have a strong e-commerce strategy are faring better than others. That's something to look to in 2022 and beyond.
Thanks. Then where's the cash balance at today since, you know, last day of the quarter? I know you mentioned it was gonna dip but then kind of start trending up in 2Q. I'm just trying to get a magnitude for what the trough looks like and any comment you could provide on, you know, are the gross margins for the first quarter expected to be comparable to 4Q?
Yeah. We're still closing, as you know. Today's the last day, as you said. This is Mehul. Overall for the quarter, we'll continue to manage our cash balance as we manage the inventory, as we burn down inventory and continue to oversee what we're gonna get from Amazon sales over the quarter and Best Buy and everybody else in the retail sector. But we will see a small dip that we'll have to go and we'll continue to improve upon as we are continuing to burn the inventory as we sort it for the, you know, shutdown from the factory that we had, and we were managing that along the way. That's where we can't get into specific detail, but hopefully that gives you some context.
Thanks. Your inventory levels are a lot higher, right? Obviously, because of what's been going on with the supply chain.
Mm-hmm.
Is that expected to kind of trend lower as we move throughout 2022 and be a potential source of cash? Or, what's the thought process on, you know, getting to sustainable cash flow profitability in 2022?
Yeah, I would, thanks, Josh. I would say you hit the nail on the head. We, you know, for the whole last year, we're monitoring stuff very closely on supply chain. You know, you can see some of these disruptions kind of further ahead, and you saw us build as we had concerns about how things were gonna perform. I think that proved actually to be very wise in retrospect, because we did see significant disruptions in our supply chain operations and manufacturing operations at the end of last year and actually through Q1. What has put us in a position to continue to be able to meet consumer demand, honestly in the context that we feel is more effective than other players in the market, is that buffer that we built up.
Now, as I said earlier, you know, you wanna have enough inventory to meet your demand, but you never wanna have so much inventory that it puts pressure on your liquidity position. As we, you know, entered the year and as we manage Q1 and as we look to manage Q2, that is absolutely a focus of ours. I think, you know, we tapered orders in Q1, and we also saw COVID shutdowns in Q1 in our manufacturing centers. That, of course, means that the payment terms, if we pay for that in Q2, we'll be, you know, bringing in less, you know, selling more additional of our stock that we have on hand, which will have a positive impact on cash.
The other thing I'd say is that, you know, one of the reasons that we were so excited to bring Mehul on board is his deep experience with supply chain management, both controlling costs, managing expectations, and talking about inventory turns. I think that having a person on the team that focuses on that is really gonna be beneficial for us. It's an area of great attention to make sure that we're not in a position where we need to raise additional capital this year. That's a key focus of ours, and we certainly are very attentive to the cash management implications that we talked about.
Then last question from me here, if I'm just looking at it, is the deferred revenue. I know you guys have had success with a couple new partnerships, right? That could be ramping the software piece of the business, and that's been growing pretty healthy. It's still up year-over-year, but it did dip quarter-over-quarter sequentially. What's, like, the cause of that drop and any guidance you could provide on, you know, what you expect for the pace of deferred revenue growth kind of for 2022 as you ramp up some of these new partnerships?
Thanks, Josh. Nicole, you wanna take this?
Sure. The growth that you saw earlier in the year is expected to continue. You know, first quarter, second quarter, third quarter growth is what we expect to see in 2022. What happened in Q4 was a one-time anomaly, if you will. We actually opened up a sales channel for a product that a retailer had not sold before, and they were unsuccessful with selling and sent us a one-time product return. When that one-time product return came back, we needed to take off the deferred revenue from that sale. We will not be moving forward with that product category with that retailer. That's essentially what you see there in the dip in deferred revenue.
Overall, we grew deferred revenue from $0 to over $700K. We expect that to continue to go up in 2022.
Yeah. I'll just add to that. I think some of the places that are really exciting, a lot of that work was done last year by the MG8702, which is a real killer product for us. I'm very excited and encouraged by the two new products that we released, the MG8725 and the MT8733 in Q4. 'Cause those I think are gonna be, you know, well received by the market and continue to drive, you know, additional folks on the software side of the house and build that deferred revenue line. Very continued hopeful for growth this year on that front.
Thanks. That's it for me.
Your next question will come from the line of David Tokos. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Hey, good morning, everybody. Calling you from Atlanta this morning. Just a couple of quick questions. I'm concerned because the stock price is below $1, and then after 30 days, you guys could be delisted. That's very worrisome to me. My basis is about $1.50, so I kind of like my basis, to be honest, because I feel like someday you guys' stock could be $5-$7 or $10 or some other number. My questions are, when do you think you'll hit profitability? I mean, I've been waiting to see you guys get profitable, and you seem to be kind of going backwards, sucking through some cash flow. That's one concern.
The other concern is the potential for the stock to be delisted, and that would be devastating for me. A reverse split is also devastating to me. People whose stocks dip below $1, sometimes they consider reverse split. I don't like hearing that. I did hear that from the nice gentleman from investor relations, and that's a potential thing that could be done, and I don't like that at all. I'm kind of hoping you guys will head to profitability. I mean, are you guys thinking you'll be profitable in 2022? That's kind of the question. I need to know if you're concerned about being delisted.
Yeah. Thanks very much. Appreciate the question. I think there's a couple of responses to it. The first is we continue to be very focused on sustainable growth. What that means to us is not having to go out to raise additional capital at this time. You know, I think you know we talked about the cash position and where it sat at the end of the year, where it will sit in Q1, where it will sit for the rest of the year. We believe that puts us on that path to sustainable growth. I'd also say that sustainable growth certainly includes adjusted EBITDA profitability. You know, these are all things that we're focused on achieving.
There are macro level effects that, you know, impact us, impact the market, that, you know, we're working hard to continue to beat the market, and continue to communicate. I'm really excited to be able to. You know, I think we haven't had an earnings call since November of last year. In the next three months we have this call where we'll be able to communicate about the strength of the business. We have our Q1 earnings call coming up shortly in May, and then we're gonna have an investor day coming up in the early part of June.
I think those are all three opportunities for us to, you know, tell what's going right about our business, continue to share what we believe to be positive, you know, momentum that we are garnering. You know, now that we have the earnings out, I'm gonna be able to do more, you know, stockholder engagement on an individual basis, which we're working with our IR firm to tee up. You know, I'd last say I think that, you know, we are obviously very attentive to the issue of the stock price. You know, I think that, you know, that's one of the reasons why I'm excited to get out on the road to talk to people, 'cause I think it's a very attractive price to purchase at.
You know, I'm not concerned about delisting. I believe that the fundamentals of the company will bring us back into alignment with you know, a price that will not result in us getting delisted. I'm focused on making sure that the company performs in a way that supports that and that we share our story with people that are interested in purchasing shares in the company. You know, hopefully that's responsive to your set of questions. You know, I'm happy to engage with you further if you are interested in a follow-on call.
Your next question will come from the line of Tim Savageaux. Please proceed.
Hi. Good morning.
Good morning.
Maybe somewhat along those same lines, hey, wondering if you can give us your thoughts on when the company might be able to return to growth on a year-on-year basis. You know, could that be as soon as Q2, given the current rebound or continued rebound in retail? Or, you know, should we be thinking more Q3, given the launch of the new product launches upcoming? I've got a follow-up from there.
Yeah. Thanks, Tim. You know, we don't tend to usually provide guidance. It was a you know kind of anomaly 'cause we're so close to the end of Q1. I would say that we continue to expect to outperform the market. You know, what the industry leader had set expectation around previously was that they would be flat from Q4 to Q1, flat from Q1 to Q2, and then kind of rebounding to have a flat year. I think that we will beat the market. You know, that means obviously having a year-over-year improvement compared to what that industry leader said. You know, I think hopefully that gives you a little bit more detail.
You know, I don't know if I covered the second part of your question, but happy to take the next part.
Yeah. I wanted to follow up on, you know, additional potential growth drivers, for calendar 2022, most notably kind of channels outside of cable, if you will. I think you mentioned something with the Telecom Infra Project and some ISP relationships coming out of that. I also wanted to touch on any opportunities stemming from rural broadband build-outs or fiber builds and how they might be able to contribute to growth in either this year or next. Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you. I'll take this first then maybe I'll add it to Nicole, who has a lot of thoughts on the product side of this. We're very encouraged by that. You know, this is one of the reasons why we're so excited about our Virgin Media mesh portfolio because that works obviously in conjunction, and it acts as an accelerant to software and hardware revenue growth. As it gets attached to cable modems, but also can work on any network, including you know, rural broadband networks that have seen so much investment. As those people get that higher speed, they're gonna be looking for improved performance from their home network. I think there's a lot of growth drivers there for us.
Nicole, you think a lot about this segment. You know, do you have any thoughts to add on that?
Sure. Let me just break it down by sort of our product portfolio and what we see as the growth drivers. Taking a look at cable modems and gateways, there's still very healthy adoption happening of DOCSIS 3.1, which is the highest speed DOCSIS that's available on the market to date. We are benefiting certainly in our top three sellers that I spoke about earlier. We're benefiting from that adoption, and we plan to continue to benefit as we've rolled out a Wi-Fi 6 portfolio of gateways and modems. Very excited about that this year. The Wi-Fi 6 gateways and modems are enabled with Minim's. They're intelligent products, so we will see deferred revenue from those.
When I take a look at the mesh side, we have a lot of greenfields there. Mesh has proven to be a more dynamic category than perhaps consumer networking, cable products. Motorola is a new entrant here. We have a lot of space to differentiate and a lot of space within retailers to offer them a product that is not made by one of their competitors. We are looking to grow our mesh placement this year, and also grow awareness amongst consumers. Mesh is actually a $560 million annual market in the U.S., which is larger than cable modems and gateways at $350 million. Our penetration here is definitely something to watch.
Finally, I'll say, you know, we talked about software a lot on the call. Adding and layering in that software as a way to improve our customer lifetime value, with the ability to cross-sell and upsell right there in the mobile app is going to be an important part of our growth. We're going to be hitting that towards the tail end of the year, but that's certainly a growth driver, that we expect to be taking effect in 2023.
Thank you.
Your next question will come from the line of Keith Rosenbloom. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. I want to ask about inventory and the quality of inventory. It's rare when you see a company today that's trading below working capital, which I think is what the company is today. I think your market cap is below your working capital. That's interesting. You have about $33 million worth of inventory. Can you speak to the quality of that inventory? Is there any anticipation that that has to be written down, or are you able to take advantage, like you said in your slide deck, that some competitors have supply chain disruptions, and this gives you an advantage by having that inventory available? As a quick follow-on to that, which I think addresses some of the other questions that have been asked. If that inventory is solid, the company seems like it's highly liquid.
I'm wondering why with the stock here at $0.90, the company doesn't buy back, let's say, you know, 1 million shares, which would be, you know, meaningful in terms of the volume and value of the stock. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Keith. I guess first question on inventory. You know, I mean, there's, you know, we have as part of our strategy been building inventory. Obviously some of that inventory goes faster than other parts of that inventory as you'd expect. Overall, the inventory is of very high quality, and we are excited to have it on, you know, in the water or on the water and in hand and actually at Amazon. Those are the three big buckets for us, what's on the water, what we have at our facilities in Southern California and Mexico, and then what we have on hand at Amazon. We're excited about the inventory levels that we have. We think they've effectively hedged against the risk.
I mean, I think it's interesting for us. You know, we entered the year with, as you note here, a significant amount of inventory on the books. At the end of last year, the factory was completely shut down. Several of the companies have returned to operations, but they've been, you know, plagued by supply chain shortages. We've seen that inventory burn down exactly as we kind of had expected it might as the supply chain disruptions finally started to impact our specific supply chain. I think the inventory is of high quality. I'm excited to see it sell through. It is selling through.
You know, I think we're in a good position and, like I said, you know, I have a lot of confidence in John Laughton, our COO, and in Mehul to make sure that we are managing those risks, making sure we have enough of not just the, you know, the chips and the top front parts and the, you know, plastics housings and all the different things that we need that come together to make our products. Also make sure that we are in a liquidity position that, you know, doesn't put any pressure on us. We're very focused on that, very, you know, comfortable with both the location of our, you know, how much inventory we have and our strategy to let that burn down, as we manage liquidity.
On the stock buyback, you know, it's certainly something to consider, as we, you know, convert inventory to cash and, you know, produce that cash position that we talked about. You know, it's interesting that, you know, when we raised the money, we certainly focused somewhat on inventory, but also on R&D investment and driving our software strategy. You know, I think those twin aims, we certainly invested in inventory. We've been investing in R&D. I think the question for us is to weigh, you know, what will have a better long-term impact on the stock price. Is it gonna be a repurchasing of shares, or is it gonna be taking that capital and pushing it into accelerating our transformation into a software business?
Those are the things that we weigh. I'm happy to have Mehul on board, you know, who's been, you know, a seasoned veteran of lots of different kind of decisions like that in his previous contexts. It's something that we'll absolutely be continuing to track and, you know, go and take it to the board for its consideration. Thank you for suggesting that. It's certainly a suggestion we take seriously, and I'll be consulting with Mehul and the team considering our cash position, talking to the board about it. If we make a decision to do that, then obviously we'll be making that news public.
At this time, there are no further questions. I will now turn it back over to the panel for closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for joining our call today. Again, we remain excited about the return to quarter-over-quarter growth from Q4 to Q1, and look forward to the next two opportunities to speak with everyone in the first part of May and the first part of June to discuss our Q1 performance and then a broader investor day, which will discuss our go-forward strategies. Thank you all, and speak with you soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.