Morning, folks. Simon Leopold, Raymond James, Semiconductor and Data Infrastructure Analyst. So that's the new addition is the Semiconductor part of it, but still Data Infrastructure. So this morning we're kicking off the Raymond James TMT & Consumer Conference here in New York. My first fireside of the day is with Harmonic. We've got CEO Nimrod Ben-Natan and CFO Walter Jankovic. So you guys had some really big news this morning. So an 8:00 A.M. Eastern quick conference call. So I'm going to go off script a bit. Why don't we start off with just filling people in on the big news about the asset sale, and we'll go from there. Thanks.
Yeah. As you may know, we've been operating two distinct business segments, the Broadband and the Video, and they had a totally different profile, customer base, growth, and by selling the business, we see an opportunity to expand our focus and growth opportunity in broadband management and the entire corporate to focus on the Broadband business. We are excited with the buyer. We care about these customers. Some of them are Broadband customers, and we see a great opportunity for them. So that's kind of the latest news of today.
So take us back a little bit, because you had an effort to sell the Video business several years ago. You undertook a review and ultimately decided not to sell it. So could you walk us through what happened then versus what's changed?
Yeah. Walter, why don't you go for that?
Sure. Certainly. So back in November of 2023, we kicked off a strategic review of that business. It concluded in April of 2024. And at that point, it was concluded that we just did not see the right exit point in terms of buyer for that business, in terms of seeing a path to closing a deal. What's different here is Mediacom approached us recently with an offer that was compelling. We thought, in the best interest of all our stakeholders, our customers, our employees, our shareholders, and in terms of our confidence and ability to close that deal, that's what's different now in the environment. O ne other thing that is significantly different than back 18 months ago, our team has worked extremely hard in terms of improving the Video business, in terms of its profitability, and really strengthened the overall portfolio of that business.
I think that's another key factor in terms of folks that were interested in the asset. O bviously, somebody approached us seeing the strength of the business and what it.
You're reported as a single unit could be considered really two businesses. There was a Hardware appliance business and a Streaming business that there's some question of, would a buyer want both of those businesses, or would you need to sell them separately? So I want to clarify, we're selling both the Appliance and the Streaming as one unit.
The sale is for both. MediaKind is also running cloud SaaS service as well as appliance. So that's a cleaner transition. Indeed, in the past, there were opportunities with either. For us, it feels as much cleaner. And indeed, the appliance business is kind of the legacy video infrastructure has been declining. T here was a growth on the SaaS Streaming.
And I presume that some of your ongoing customers, so those in the Broadband segment, are also customers of the Video segment. Have you been able to talk to them about this transaction and make sure and see how they feel about it?
So this is real time. Our team is taking care of that. We think that, as we said, this is good for our customers. As the combined new company is going to be the market leader in this video infrastructure and SaaS streaming, they will be more than $100 million in SaaS recurring revenue. I think it's the biggest independent player in this space. T here's lots of opportunities. There is a lot of live sports. So I think net-net this is good for our customers, good for our employees that are going to be transitioning to MediaKind.
Then the next question we have to ask is, so once the deal closes, all-cash transaction, I believe, what do you plan to do with the funds?
So as we said, this will help us to fuel our investment in Broadband. We will continue investing in the fiber business. We will be looking at other opportunities to expand our capabilities in the market, as well as executing on the $200 million share repurchase program that we have underway.
And so I want to sort of pivot to my prepared questions then. Now, given sort of the way the company's transforming, how do you want to introduce Harmonic to a prospective new investor?
So we are a leading broadband provider for cable and fiber operators globally. We are enabling our customers to upgrade their networks to deliver symmetric multi-gigabit speeds at the highest quality of experience and enabling them the lowest possible operating costs. So these are all very important metrics for them in today's environment. In cable specifically, we've pioneered the virtualized architecture category. In cable specifically, we've got north of 90% market share. O n the distributed devices that you put into the network to deliver the broadband service, we've got north of 60%, like 65% market share. We work with the leading operators globally. Comcast, Charter are two of the largest customers. W e are expanding our customer base. We've announced quite a few customers earlier this year in the Tier 2 categories, both in the U.S. and in Europe. The market has been going through a transition.
Specifically in cable, the transition to DOCSIS 4.0 was somewhat of a headwind during 2025, and we see all of that turning into tailwind for 2026. We also provide the fiber optionality, which is helping our customers not only upgrade and extend the life of their network, but also surgically, and wherever they do new development or edging out of their network to go fiber to the home on top of the same architecture, which is kind of a converged architecture, so I think that's kind of how I would position the Broadband business of Harmonic.
Yeah. J ust to add to it, just from more of a business model perspective, and this has been seen in our past results, we run a very good operating model in terms of our overall operating leverage that we get on the business. A s we look forward to 2026 and some of the tailwinds that we're expecting and the growth trajectory off that cost base, we see a very attractive model here in terms of the operating leverage, as well as the growth going forward on a standalone Broadband basis.
So one of the debates I sometimes hear is, when do consumers have enough broadband? In that penetration is obviously high, what motivates your customers to continuously upgrade their networks? Isn't there a point where everybody's got broadband, everybody can stream? What do I need it for?
So I think when you think of speed, there is how much you need, and there is always the competitive environment. So you compete with providing enough speed, and we see people use more and more. More recently, we see that with AI. AI is also interesting because it's requiring not just speed, but also latency when you do all those real-time services like voice with ChatGPT. So putting a network that is not only speed, but also latency is one factor for investment. Making sure that the network will have enough upstream capacity, specifically for cable, depending on the architecture and the network, there is an Achilles' heel with the upstream. So taking care of that is important.
Wherever they can, whether it's business services, edging out, if you put a new network today, you want to do fiber, and you want to do that in a way that you have synergy with the rest of your network. So that's another category that they invest in. I think one of the other areas is, how can you reduce the churn of the network while managing your cost, make the network more self-healing, avoid sending a truck roll for each and every problem in the network? C ombined, when you look at all of that, that's driving the waves of investment that we've seen, DOCSIS 3.1, plus 4.0, and fiber optionality, and then enabling tools on top of that network.
Yeah. I appreciate that not every operator does exactly the same thing at the same time. But maybe at an industry level, could you help us understand the timeline you envision for the DOCSIS 4.0 rollout, for the changes in architecture? And then take us a longer term in that I think you and others in the industry have talked about this idea of, well, Fiber H ome is the end game. Do we really anticipate that cable operators will transition, or is that something just for new builds? How do you think about a fiber business in sort of the long game?
Yeah. So on the first part of the question, DOCSIS 4.0, the technology itself has two flavors, Full Duplex and Extended Spectrum. Comcast specifically have started the Full Duplex a while back, and this is undergoing. The Extended Spectrum version, or kind of the unified architecture, it became available about a year ago. O nly now, kind of the end-to-end technology is becoming available. T hat's why we've seen the headwind in 2025. W e see that turning to tailwinds for 2026. W e've announced quite a few customers that are going with DOCSIS 4.0, including Mediacom, GCI, and others. T he technology is available. W e certainly see that kind of progressing into 2026. We did say that it's going to ramp. It's not going to start at full scale at the beginning of the year. T hat's on DOCSIS 4.0.
As far as fiber, yeah, if you build something new today, you're going to do fiber- to- the-h ome. The question is, how do you manage your CapEx and your customer base such that you can eventually get there without leaving your subscribers behind, without losing your subscribers? It's very easy to take your entire CapEx, do fiber, which takes many years to deploy, and lose many of them, while kind of those that you maintain are fiber. T he whole idea of how you go through 3.1 plus 4.0 and enable the fiber optionality is really what we focus on so that over time, they can maintain the subscriber base, make the best operating network for quality of experience and for operating cost, and get more and more fiber, whether it's an edge-out, an MDU, business customers.
At some point, and it could take 10 years or more, they will rebuild themselves, or in a given neighborhood, there's going to be a combination of fiber and DOCSIS coax customers. So this is really how we see the future.
Now, in the introduction, you mentioned some market share numbers. I t wasn't 100%, 100% in everything. C ould you talk a little bit about what the competitive landscape looks like in terms of the sort of nature of competitors? Are there variations in geography in terms of the components?
You know, competition is good, and I always tell my team, even if there is no competition, we have to create one so that we drive ourselves to innovate and improve. We do have competitors in the space, but you can see the numbers in terms of the market share, the big customers. We've been working with Comcast. We announced recently an expanded agreement with Charter to cover their entire footprint, so there is competition, and customers have choices. W e do everything we can to win the business. I think one of the other things that is unique about us is that we don't take our market position for granted. We keep innovating time after time. Those who come to see us at trade shows, more recently at SCTE, we always push the envelope on some unique industry capabilities.
Because again, when you have 99% market share, you don't compete against a competitor. You compete against a business case. You compete against the customer satisfaction. You want to delight them. You want to speed up the pace of deployments, so this is really how we see the competition. At the same time, on fiber, we're a small player that is kind of expanding the footprint. Kind of the base market for us is within cable. We have a lot of specialty in the architecture. There is a lot of synergy in kind of the converged architecture with what we do for DOCSIS. W e expand into the pure telco market, where also there we see unique capabilities, and over there, we've got bigger competitors to deal with.
Now, within the cable space, there's a product category you don't play in, is amplifiers and I perceive that as a pretty sizable market opportunity. There are a lot of amplifiers, and the DOCSIS 4.0 cycle sort of requires you to replace amplifiers. Could you help us understand why you don't participate in that market, or would it be something you'd be interested in? If not, why not?
We think it's a market with quite a few established players. We did not see a winning strategy where we can become a meaningful player in the market. It's also a lower margin category, and we think focusing on what we do and going into fiber and overlaying operating tools was a higher priority for us. We did, however, make an agreement specifically with Sercomm on the so-called Full Duplex or Unified Amplifier, the Brilliant Amplifier, to collaborate with them and help them bring that to market. We talked about that in the past.
Is it a market you don't want to play in, or?
At this point in time, we think that the established vendors cover this market fairly well.
I don't know that I've had a question in some time on the BEAD program, which is the government assistance to help spread Broadband. I think some of your customers have been involved in that. I don't think we've talked about it much on your recent earnings call.
No. We occasionally get the question. I think what we've been doing from a BEAD perspective is, first of all, making sure we're compliant and available to support our customers. Recently, there was the announcement that we put out a press release with regards to our collaboration with Comcast, specifically in the fiber domain, and we see customers who are out there winning BEAD programs and bidding and winning BEAD programs, so it's definitely in our portfolio. Is it a significant growth factor for us in 2026? Likely not. It's more out there in the future, but we're definitely poised and ready to take advantage of that by working closely with our customer base.
Comcast, biggest customer. You've been good about disclosures. We always appreciate the transparency. This has been a little bit of a weird year, some of which related to their pivot to DOCSIS 4.0. Could you, to the extent you're able to discuss what's happened over the course of the last year with Comcast and your confidence that they remain a strong customer, what's your thought on that strategy?
I'll kick it off. T hen maybe Nimrod, you want to provide a little more color. I think early in the year and going back to late last year, we had indicated that in their particular network, the requirement and a gating factor was getting these Brilliant Amplifiers that Nimrod just walked you through in terms of that being very important to keep the scale and the pace going of the DOCSIS 4.0 FDX deployments out in the network. Last couple of quarters, we had indicated that, in fact, those amplifiers are now available. They're available at scale. So that is not a gating factor in terms of moving forward and not placing any gate in regards to any of the products that we provide, which are the edge devices, the nodes that go out in the network.
Is there sort of a logical ordering that do operators place amplifiers and then your equipment, or do they replace your equipment, then amplifiers? Does this matter?
I think it varies by customer. If they put amplifiers and nodes in conjunction, or they do one and then the other, so it's hard to comment on that specifically. I'll say a few more things. We've been working with Comcast for many years. They use our virtual CMTS. They use us for the fiber with virtual BNG and remote OLTs, and we share with another vendor the Remote PHY devices in the network, and over time, it's like territories that are kind of split between the vendors. The footprint that we have is kind of set, and when you see fluctuations of business, it's kind of based on where deployments are going in a certain period of time, but even from a revenue point of view, we've been very consistent with them for quite some time.
And I guess help folks understand, how far along is this project? I think my recollection is we actually started deployment late 2019, 2020. So we're in our sixth year. Is that close to right?
I think publicly, Comcast talked about the multiple waves that they've gone through, the initial mid-split, and then the Full Duplex. They have provided some progress milestones along the way. I don't remember what was the latest one, but.
I think they've said they're slightly more than halfway through, if my recollection is correct.
But then you have to look whether it's the.
Is it the 3.1 versus the 4.0?
Yeah. That's correct.
But six years, there's more to do, is my point.
Six years, there is more to do. There is a lot of improvements that are introduced over time. The software itself is getting upgraded and updated all the time, which is also beneficial for the rest of the industry. That's an area we talked about, the whole self-healing capabilities in the network. Comcast introduced this Octave tool that is dynamically changing the network condition. It's, I think, doing magic to the customer experience.
So maybe contrast the Charter project then, because that's a much more recent customer. They've really only just begun. How does the engagement with Charter compare to the engagement with Comcast?
Every customer is different in terms of the level of engagement. We were selected for the virtual CMTS in late 2023 and more recently extended the agreement to cover the entire footprint. Charter's acquisition of multiple operators. We've been working very closely with them over time to get all the integration into all the ecosystems. I think a quarter ago, they basically gave a status that step two of their project is underway.
So I'm going to ask a question that I trust you'll be diplomatic in how you answer, because it's always a little awkward to talk about customers, but I can say it. I don't understand the Charter timeline in that they've talked about initially, well, we'll be done in two years. Oh, it's probably going to take three years. When I can look at what's happened at Comcast, I'm six years into it. Yes, it's multi-phased. Y es, it has some complexities. But six years, slightly more than halfway through, and Charter's barely started and tells us, oh, don't worry, three years. I appreciate it's a tricky question. But you're smart guys. How should analysts following your company think about that timeline?
So I'm not going to answer for Charter. The one thing I can say is that every customer is different in terms of their network, kind of the architecture they select. And by the way, we do know that it's a different architecture. This is Full Duplex. This is Extended Spectrum. T hen there is maturity of technology. What you started six years ago and you spent a lot of time on is given to you today. Y ou can spend less time on it.
And then Charter has a somewhat different architecture. Y ou talked about the Full Duplex being used by Comcast and Charter's embracing a different architecture called Extended Spectrum. But now we have a new wrinkle in that they talk about using unified amplifiers, that it would do Full Duplex and Extended Spectrum. Is that, or should we think of that as a factor that causes it to be slower? How does that sort of new architecture or variant or option affect the timeline for you?
I don't see any problem. Really, the choice of amplifiers is if you put an Extended Spectrum, the network would always be extended. If you put Unified, you can decide. So you get the flexibility. Unified amplifiers, as we mentioned earlier, are available. There's one vendor that is leading that. Sercomm is getting into that market. So I think there is going to be enough choice and supply to support that. So I don't see how it impacts us.
Now, I'd like you to remind me of the number of cOS, that's your main operating system. How many customers did you announce in the last earnings call? I think I've lost track. It's 100 small.
I think we're up to 140.
Over 140.
So we've now talked about two. So that leaves about 138 others. And really, where this question's going is trying to understand what those other customers are doing, what are their dynamics internationally, U.S. And maybe we need to sort of parse it based on geography would be logical. But we haven't seen spike up from kind of that other group. Help us understand some of those dynamics.
First of all, we're very happy to have the two largest customers. I think the progress that we made in 2025 as part of our diversification progress was very meaningful. We won quite a few Tier 2 customers. We talked about Mediacom, GCI, Midco, Telia in Norway. These are wins that did not necessarily go into full scale of deployments, again, multi-year projects. Some of the problem was the DOCSIS 4.0 operators were on the sidelines to see if and when the technology will kind of crystallize in terms of the availability. I think that got kind of cleared during 2025, so we see more of them. We expect to see now, so we announced many, as well as we did not provide exact dollar numbers. Qualitatively, we did talk about a significant increase in revenue on the non-top two customers over 2025.
Yeah. Year- over- year, last couple of quarters, we've been highlighting the momentum, and we expect that momentum to continue as we go into 2025 for all the reasons Nimrod mentioned in terms of a lot of those customer wins that we have been announcing, as well as what they've been saying publicly in terms of deploying their networks.
If we look out to we're about to head to 2026, how should we think about the cadence or the nature of the other customers during the course of the next year plus?
Yeah. I would say that from non-top two customers, the momentum will continue to build as we go through 2026. We talked about the readiness of unified DOCSIS 4.0 and customers who are adopting that, and so we have been preparing for those customers in terms of getting our solutions fully set, specifically around our nodes and the RF tray that needs to be in those particular nodes to allow those customers to go full speed. We expect to get those out by the end of the year, just as we've been telegraphing earlier over the last couple of quarters, and then that to ramp as the year goes on, and that's what some of the commentary that we gave during our last earnings call in terms of what's our expectation in terms of direction for 2026.
We see significant growth as we have been talking about for the last few quarters as we look at 2026. We see that going quarter to quarter in terms of starting out. We had made some comments last earnings call that Q1, we see some sequentially from Q4 guidance we just gave for Broadband. Sequentially, we see some modest uptick in terms of the revenue. Then it will pick up from there in terms of momentum gaining as we go and progress through the year.
Great. So we're just about out of time. So I always like to close with the following question. What do you think is the least appreciated or perhaps most misunderstood aspect of the Harmonic story?
So, I think the longevity and the nature of upgrades in this network. It's always seen as like a one-off and what's going to happen beyond. You talked about Comcast as they have gone through these six years, and it's not over yet. 3.1, 3.1 Plus, 4.0, fiber optionality. We see multiple waves and then overlaying tools on top of that. I think that's something that we see and we're excited about. I think it's not always appreciated by investors.
Yeah. And just to add with regards to the tools, it's the buildup of the recurring revenue streams as we grow our installed base, the opportunity that we were demonstrating at the recent SCTE in terms of the capability of those tools and providing those add-on services. That is another revenue stream that I just don't feel like investors today appreciate what is being built up here by the team.
I think one other thing is our fiber business. And again, I think that's an area that we did not disclose enough. M aybe that's something that we need to look at. But we're actually gaining significant market share revenue, primarily in cable, but we're expanding outside of cable into telcos. And again, it integrates very nicely into our architecture. We announced Comcast and a few other customers. So I think that's also not fully appreciated. W e're excited about the outlook for our fiber opportunity.
Great. Nimrod, Walter, thank you very much for joining us, folks. Thanks for joining us. We'll be wrapping up session with Harmonic.
Thanks.