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spk08: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to LOT's second quarter 2022 results conference call. All participants are present in listen-only mode. Following management's formal presentation, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. You should have all received by now the company's press release. If you have not received it, please contact Allot's investor relations team at EK Global Investor Relations at 1-212-378-8040 or view it in the news section of the company's website at www.allot.com. I would now like to hand over the call to Mr. Kenny Green of EK Global Investor Relations. Mr. Green, would you like to begin, please?
spk06: Thank you, Operator. Thank you, Operator. Welcome to Allott's second quarter 2022 results conference call. I would like to welcome all of you to the conference call, and I'd like to thank Allott's management for hosting this call. With us on the line today are Mr. Erez Emtebi, President and CEO, and Mr. Ziv Leitman, CFO. Erez will provide an opening statement to summarize the key highlights of the quarter. We will then open the call for the question and answer session, and both Erez and Ziv will be available to answer those questions. You can all find the financial highlights and metrics included, those we typically discuss on the conference call in today's earnings press release. Before we start, I'd like to point out the safe harbor statement. This conference call contains projections of other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the company. These statements are only predictions, and Allot cannot guarantee that they will in fact occur. Allot does not assume any obligation to update that information. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected, including as a result changing market trends, delays in the launch of services by our customers, reduced demand and the competitive nature of the security systems industry, as well as risks identified in the documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And with that, I'd like to hand the call over to Erez. Erez, please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, Kenny. I'd like to welcome all of you to our conference call, and thank you for joining us today. Our second quarter revenues reached $32.8 million, 7% lower than comparable revenues last year. After 17 straight quarters of revenue growth year over year, this is the first quarter that our revenues have not grown. And while this is what we expected, I am not pleased with this. In June 22, 2022, our CCAS ARR was $6.9 million, up 17% from March 2022. As you will have seen from our earnings release, Despite overall progress and confidence in our long-term vision, we are facing headwinds that have led us to further lower our forecast for this year. I will address these headwinds and their impact in more detail as I discuss our forecast later in the call. I would like to start by discussing our traffic management and analytics business addressed by our Allot Smart product line. The main use cases we see today in CSPs are continuing to be in traffic management, congestion management, quality of user experience, especially for video, policy and charging control, and digital enforcement. During the last few months, we were awarded several deals where we will either replace a direct competitor's product that is installed or provide a DPI solution where there was no such capability before. For example, the deal we announced with Ethio Telecom, the Ethiopian CSP, will be a new AllotSmart installation where such capability did not exist before. We are discussing multiple other opportunities with other CSPs currently using our competitor's product and are working on expanding such deals that we won before. We are continuously increasing the number of CSPs that we work with either by replacing competition and DPI or by providing new capabilities. As governments look to fight crime and terrorism, we see a growing interest globally to be able to block illegal activities such as drug trafficking, child pornography, or terrorism. We are seeing growing interest in our products in this area as well. In addition, we are investing in new ways to help wireless operators manage congestion on their networks, and save on their cost of expansions. Several sizable deals that we expected to book and be able to partially deliver in the second and third quarters were delayed and are now not expected to close before the fourth quarter. We did not lose any of them, and we believe they will close by the fourth quarter, but we cannot be assured of that. Given the delay in closing the deals, and uncertainty regarding the exact time when we will close the deal and the exact terms required to recognize revenue, we cannot be assured that all the revenues we expected from them in 2022 will be recognized this year. As a result of the above, we are reducing our revenue forecast for the third quarter and for the remainder of the year. Looking at the DPI market in general, we see many opportunities and an overall solid DPI market. Many of the more significant opportunities we see are either new customers or competitor replacement opportunities. However, this makes the opportunities more concentrated and the revenues lumpier. We continue to see a good win rate for Alok. In addition, We see that it is taking us longer to close DPI deals than it took in the past. We don't know why this is. In part, this may be due to larger sizes of the deals. It may also be related to the general economic environment, and we do not know if this will be a continuing trend. I am fully aware of the challenges we are facing and that it is becoming more challenging to estimate the timing of deals and to provide accurate forecasts. I would like to stress again that as I see it, the DPI market is solid. We have many large opportunities in our pipeline, and we are continuing to win against competition. I want to turn our attention now to what we see in our cybersecurity business and how that market is developing. As I've said in previous calls, Alot is transforming into a cybersecurity company, and this is where we see most of our future revenue growth coming from. We are engaged worldwide with CSPs that are looking to provide their customers with network-based CCAS. As we look at the market, we see the direction and momentum of operators interested to launch network-based security services continues to be very positive. We see that the number of engagements, the level of engagements, a lot win rate, the acceptance and scope of service by consumers in SMB, The requests we are getting from customers and vendors to integrate more products to our management platform are all improving and getting stronger. We see evidence of all of these in the rate and size of deals we are awarded and in the networks that have commercially launched. This results in continuing to close additional CCAS deals with more operators. During the second quarter, we signed several additional CCAS deals. With Vodafone, we signed a CCAS deal to launch security services to fixed broadband customers using a low home secure product with the intention to deploy in seven different European countries. In addition, we also signed agreements with the Mobile CSP and APAC who plans to launch our network secure and with the Central and Eastern European Mobile CSP Group that plans on launching our DNS security offering in a few countries. In addition, we are in contract negotiations with several other operators in North America, Latin America, EMEA, and APAC, where we were awarded deals but have not signed the contracts yet. I would like to say a few words on the North American market. As we previously announced, ALOT has already signed CCAS deals with three operators in North America, one of which is DISH. None of these operators have launched yet. As I previously mentioned, we were awarded by a fourth North American operator and are engaged in contract discussions with them. In addition, I would like you to know that we are in the process of closing a CCAS contract with a fifth North American operator, initially targeting a specific segment of their customer base. While we cannot assure you the contracts will be signed, we are very optimistic. These potential contracts represent an MAR of dozens of millions of dollars. In addition, we are in serious discussions with additional operators. North America is the largest telecom market globally. ALORT was traditionally much stronger in other regions, and the advancement we are making with North American operators represent a significant change for ALOC and will be key to generating CCAS revenues in 2023 and beyond. Our main challenge is to translate the contracts into revenues. The first challenge is to launch the service. This process involves many stakeholders, technical, operational, marketing, purchasing, and more. They all have multiple other tasks and priorities. Often, integration of our products with different internal IT systems is required. We have increased our efforts to assist in these processes, and in some cases, we can help. During the last seven months, we spent significant and concentrated efforts to try and speed up the launches of every operator we signed with. Unfortunately, we concluded that while in some cases we managed to speed up things, Overall, our ability to positively impact the launch date is very limited. As a result, we will change our approach and focus future efforts of speeding up launches mainly on larger opportunities that we believe can contribute significantly to revenues. I will talk more about this and other changes we are making in our focus and how we run the business a bit differently. During the second quarter, two additional CSPs launched CCAT services. One of them is Tango in Luxembourg, and another is a predominantly prepaid CSP in our APAC region. As of June 30, 2022, of the 24 signed customers, only 11 launched commercially. Most of them are relatively small operators, and most of them launched the service only to a portion of their subscriber base. The second challenge we have is the marketing aggressiveness the CSP when launching the CCAS service. Aggressive go-to-market approaches can include, among others, proactively offering the service in every customer interaction, bundling the security offering in the price plan for some or all of the customers, etc. The degree to which a CSP will be aggressive in their go-to-market approach is primarily determined by the perceived value of the service. Unfortunately, we have learned that merely adding revenues to the CSP is not a strong enough motivation. CSPs have multiple value-added services and these typically have low penetration rates which CSPs seem to be content with. If security is perceived as another value-added service, the expectations of it will be low, the targets given to the working level in the CSP will be low, and the results will be low. This can also result and the CSP not prioritizing the launch of the service. On the other hand, when an operator sees security as presenting a strategic value, the motivation and results change. What is strategic will change from one operator to another. And this can include elements such as differentiation in the market compared to competitors, motivation to transition a customer from a 4G legacy service to a 5G service, overall brand perception of the operator as a secure broadband provider or motivation to transition a customer from a low-tariff plan to a more expensive one and others. The willingness of the CSP to commit to an aggressive go-to-market approach in the contract is, to a degree, an indication of how strategic this service is to them. Bringing all of the above into account, we decided to change certain elements of our approach to the market. One, going forward, we will focus on CSPs that have significant revenue potential, even at the expense of market share. Two, we will push very hard to have CSPs we engage with contractually commit to an aggressive go-to market. Of course, we will not always be able to get such a commitment, especially if the CSP is a major tier one operator, and with such major operators, we may have to agree to a practical approach. Three, CSPs of medium size that will not commit to an aggressive go-to-market approach, and small CSPs, regardless of their planned go-to-market approach, will be offered commercial terms where our revenues are not dependent on their marketing success. We expect some of these CSPs may agree to this, and some will not. I expect these changes will have an impact on the number of CSPs we eventually sign up. However, it will allow us to focus our resources on the smaller number of CSPs that we see more strategic value in, the CCAS service, that will ultimately drive our revenues. As I look at the deals we have done and those that are in the pipeline, I am convinced that the size of the market remains huge. While I'm disappointed with the current pace at which our revenues are materializing, I remain confident in our ability to achieve our long-term goals. Looking ahead, I want to summarize our expectations for 2022. The CCAS revenues and ARR in 2022 are composed of the projected performance of the 11 networks we launched, plus the projected revenue of new networks yet to be launched. As I noted, unfortunately, Launch dates are hard for us to predict reliably. Launches continue to get delayed, and so far during the first six months of this year, we launched a disappointing number of only three operators. We continue to see launch dates delayed by the CSPs for a variety of reasons. Some of the reasons for those delays, as I mentioned in previous calls, are budget allocation, team resource allocation and prioritization within the CSP, especially in the IT department, internal issues between group headquarters and national operating entities, and also product maturity and integration issues with our DNS secure and home secure. I would like to note that we expect to launch additional CCS networks during 2022, despite the above delays. But the total number of launches in 2022 will be lower than what was expected in the beginning of the year. As we are getting closer to year end and given that usually There are also a few months of free service and ramp-up time. We don't expect them to have significant contribution to 2022. Most of our CCAS revenues are tied to the Euro. From January till today, the Euro fell about 10% compared to the US dollars. This has a negative effect on our revenues. We continue to forecast CCAS revenues for the whole of 2022 to be $7 million, But due primarily to additional delayed launches, we now expect our December 2022 ARR to be around $9 million. Despite the change in our approach to future CCAS deals, as I explained before, we still expect to achieve $180 million of new MAR in 2022. It is important to note that while MAR is a good indicator for long-term market opportunity, It is not a good predictor for short-term revenue. I would now like to say a few words on our expectation for the overall company performance in 2022. Bringing into account our reduced capex revenues as described earlier, we are now forecasting total revenues for 2022 to be between $125 to $130 million. We expect third quarter revenues to be around $25 million, substantially lower than previously expected and with a much stronger fourth quarter. Our forecast for support and maintenance revenues remains at $41 to $43 million. We expect our gross margin for the year to remain around 70% despite our near-term headwind. We have already implemented some cost-cutting measures, as can be seen from the lower OPEX for 2022 than the previous guidance, and we will continue to closely control our expenses. The changes I discussed earlier in our approach to CCAS contracts will also help us reduce upfront costs. As we continue to adjust our expenses, we expect our OPEX for the year to be between $111 and $115 million. As a result, we expect our loss for the full year 2022 to be between $23 and $24 million, the same as we expected at the beginning of the year. Likewise, we believe our net cash reduction for the year will also be, as previously guided, between $35 to $38 million. Our goal is to further reduce our loss in 2023 and reach profitability for the full year of 2024. We have set our goal to be profitable in 2024 by growing our CCAS revenues and closely controlling our expenses. I am fully aware of the challenges that we face. I believe our DPI business is solid and will continue as such. Our CCAS business is where we see our significant future growth. While our CCAS revenues are happening later than we would like and later than we expected, I remain convinced of the very large potential of this business, and I'm confident that it will grow very significantly in the coming years. I have full faith in our company, our team, and our products, and I believe the actions we are taking make these goals achievable. And now I would like to open the call for Q&A. Zeva and myself will be available to take your questions. Operator?
spk08: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star 1. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you are using speaker equipment, kindly lift the handset before pressing the numbers. Your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Please stand by while we pull for your questions. The first question is from Eric Martinuzzi of Lake Street. Please go ahead.
spk04: Yeah, I wanted to start off with your big picture commentary around 2024 and the expectation that we'll be profitable in 2024. I'm curious to know, you know, is there a quarterly revenue number that that is based on or, you know, maybe an operating expense assumption that that is based on?
spk01: Look, like I said, we're going to control very closely our expenses going forward. Now, you know, it's very, very hard for us to, we didn't do a budget for 2024, right? But we made certain assumptions internally. We made certain assumptions on what we would consider to be even at the lower end, I would say realistic CCATS revenues and other revenues for 2024. And what do we think we can afford to spend in order to get that? And we believe that the target of achieving profitability in 24 is achievable.
spk04: Okay. The layoffs that you made in Q2, well, let me ask, were those made in Q2 or Q3, the cost cuts already?
spk01: I'm sorry. I didn't understand the question.
spk04: Did the cost cuts that you've made already, were these in Q2 or were they in Q3?
spk01: We've made some cost cuts in Q2. We have good control, I think, of our expenses in Q3, and that's why our overall OPEX is going to be lower than what we had expected or budgeted for at the beginning of the year. It's an ongoing process.
spk04: Okay. So the The assumption then that the $27.2 million of non-GAAP operating expenses in Q2, is the assumption then that we'll be at or that that would be a trough as we look to the Q3?
spk01: As we said, the expenses for the EU will be between 1.11 to 1.15. So if you take the midpoint, it's 1.13. And the total OPEX for the first half of the year, it was 53, which means for the second half of the year, we are going to have OPEX of 60. So it's an average of 30 million per each of the quarter.
spk04: Okay, I'll step away from the expense question and take that offline. As you look at the likelihood of these CapEx transactions, the several CapEx transactions that you're concerned about and that have pushed out here, is your probability of those transactions closing Has that probability, have you gotten more conservative in this guidance here, the thinking now versus the guidance in May?
spk01: I don't think it's an issue. I'll divide that question into two parts. One is my assessment on whether or not the deals were closed. And I'm just as confident that they will close now as it was And the other issue is the timing of that. The timing has changed, unfortunately, on several of them rather dramatically. And so, you know, I hope that answers the question.
spk04: Okay. And then for the reason for that change, I'm assuming these are carriers. And back to your comments earlier about prioritization of this particular, you know, these DPI type projects versus other projects that they are implementing? Is that the right way to think about it?
spk01: I think it's a priority issue on the customer side, but I can't be 100% sure for each one of them.
spk04: Okay. And then last question for me, just the size of the the overall pipeline for the business? And again, I'm asking the DPI side. How does the pipeline for DPI compare now versus last quarter and now maybe versus a year ago?
spk01: Look, I think compared to last quarter, I think it's similar or larger today than it was last quarter. And as of a year ago, I'd have to go back and look, but if you ask my intuition, I think it's probably larger than what we were looking at a year ago.
spk04: Okay. Thanks for taking my question.
spk01: Pipeline is the total pipeline of the deals we are working on, irrespective of the timing of when they were closed.
spk04: Got it.
spk08: The next question is from Nihal Chokshi. Please go ahead.
spk05: Yeah, thank you. Congratulations on the incremental traction in North American markets and what I believe was your largest incremental CCAS ARR quarter. Those are positives. With these go-to-market changes that you're talking about, especially with the smaller carriers, when you're talking about commercial agreements or independent marketing success. How does that work out? Is that effectively now becoming a CapEx deal? Can you just define the mechanics there?
spk01: No, it's not a CapEx deal, but we want to serve it. Think of it as something like an enterprise-wide license. So we would say there's a small operator in some place and they want to launch a CCAS service. what we will offer them today, or sorry, what we had been offering until now was okay, we'll come, we'll help you start the service, don't pay us anything, don't commit to anything, and as you, your operator, as an operator, your revenues grow, you get more customers and so on, you will pay us more additional, you double the number of customers, you pay us double, et cetera, per month. Now we'll come to them and say, look, we don't want to You're too small for us. We'll be a lot more nicer. We'll phrase it nicer than I'm telling you now. The essence is we're not going to be dealing with helping you get penetration rates. We're not going to spend resources teaching you how to go to market and so on. If you want to work with us, fine. We'll provide you a package of everything that you need to launch the CCAP service. And you will pay us X dollars a month. And, you know, the more successful you are, the more money you make. We still make the same amount of money, but we also make the same amount of money regardless if you don't have one customer. And that's a very, very different deal. So it's still a rather different one. And, Niel, maybe you should think about this like a regular Seekers deal as all the others, but with a minimum amount. And on the other end, maybe there is also a cap. So, practically speaking, if It's the same service that we are providing. It's not licensed. The same CCAP, the same security service, but with a minimum and a cap.
spk05: And so between the minimum and the cap, there is some scaling with the success of the carrier then in the case of these commercial agreements then?
spk01: Yeah, I don't know. we're not going to spend on these on these operators we're not going to spend our resources to optimize the results okay so and that that's going to take a significant burden off of us okay all right and um based on the q a from the prior speaker um it sounds like uh you don't have well defined yet what kind of optic savings
spk05: you're going to have from this new go-to-market motion. But just to be clear, the layoffs that have been executed thus far, has that been just in the DPI business, or is that also on the CCAS business?
spk01: When we say we're having good control of our expenses and reducing our expenses, it doesn't necessarily mean layoffs. Reducing expenses could be from a whole variety of factors. like subcontractors, many other things. What we're able to share is what the total expense we expect to be for the year, which we did. And, yeah, we're doing it. And we are, of course, looking at our costs across the whole company.
spk05: Okay. Okay. So presumably this new go-to-market motion with respect to CCAS is going to be effectively a lower SG&A to revenue ratio, short-term, mid-term, and long-term. Is that a correct assertion?
spk01: Could you please repeat the question? I didn't understand.
spk05: Yeah, the SG&A spend as a percent of revenue with this new go-to-market motion that you're talking about, where you're not going to focus on the success of mid to small CSTs, you're going to be looking at a lower SG&A as a percent of CCAS revenue on a short-term, mid-term, and long-term basis. Is that correct?
spk01: The SG&A portion is out of the total revenues. We don't take it out of the We don't split it out of the CECAS revenues. So altogether, out of the total revenues, we shouldn't expect major changes. All right. The total revenues will be lower.
spk05: True. Okay. Understood. And then what about the Vodafone 6 deal? That sounds like that might be pretty meaningful that they have an aggressive go-to-market.
spk01: Can you talk about that a little bit? They are discussing with us, of course, the go-to-market in the different countries that they're going to launch this. But unfortunately, I'm not free to discuss the details of how they plan to take this service into their market. But I think I agree with you. Yeah, I think it's a very important deal. I will add things that you already know. We already have a really historic network secure service with Vodafone, which was a CapEx deal and still is. So this is an additional type of security, this time in a CCAS type contract that Vodafone is contracting with. And the historical network secure build was deployed over 10 operators, and now the plan for the home secure deployed over seven operators with the initial stage.
spk05: Okay, got it. Thank you.
spk08: The next question. is from Tal Liani of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hi, guys. I want to focus on revenues and ARR. And the first question is, how much of the weakness that you see is you attribute to your own internal things, whether it's not the right go-to-market, not the right service to customers, etc.? ? And how much of it is related to customers not spending, push out of projects? I'm trying to, I'm not looking for a number. I'm looking for understanding of the sources for the weakness.
spk01: I think the main source in my mind is, I would say, the key factor is is how interesting is CCAS service and what is the perceived value of the operator of this service? If it's strategic to them, then a lot of things happen quickly and aggressively. And we see that with some of the operators that when they look at it this way and they really see it as strategic, then a lot of the problems we have become a lot simpler. With other operators, if they just perceive it as another value-added service, then it's one of many services, and they don't necessarily, and even if it's successful and brings them revenues and so on, they don't attach the same importance to it. Now, our challenge has been to change the mindset of operators that we signed with that have looked at this just as another value-added service revenue generating to show them that there's more strategic value in it. In a few of them, we've been successful. In most of them, we have not yet been successful. I'm not sure if I answered your question.
spk07: But, Erez, is this, so taking your answer, is this an allot issue, meaning you don't have the right products or you don't have the right, you don't cater to the right needs, or is this a spending issue? I'm trying to understand if the solution is just the recovery in the market, meaning recovery of spending, or the solution is you need to do something else with your portfolio. That was my question, whether it's an internal issue or external issue.
spk01: Fair enough. Look, I don't think it's a product issue. The whole concept of operators offering network-based security services to consumers a few years ago was nonexistent. They didn't do that. They were reselling apps. So this is something, this is a mindset that is changing for operators. It's not a product-related issue in the sense that if we had a different feature set or we developed a different product and so on, then something would change. It's not about that. Of course, we have to have a good product, et cetera. But notwithstanding, if you're asking a very, very high level, it's not about the product. It's about the realization or not of the operator that they really must provide this kind of service. Now, you know, to me, the most dramatic change happened in the North American market. A few years ago, none of the operators were interested in offering network-based security services. They didn't see it as something of value. They didn't look at it as anything strategic. This has changed. The mindset of the operators in North America has changed. And I mentioned how many were interacting with them and what we're closing. So even though we don't see any revenue numbers from there because we haven't launched anything on CCAS in North America, I see the change in the mindset of the operators and the importance they put on this and why they want to do this. which they didn't want to do two, three years ago. Now, in other places in the world, that change is sometimes happening and sometimes not. And some operators in countries understand that they really need to make a difference and some don't. But I'm seeing the shift in the operator's mindset overall from understanding that, okay, from thinking that they can get away as a, you know, just as a, as a quote unquote dump pipe to know they have to provide a secure connection and become a secure broadband operator to their customers. That's changing, but it's not related to our products as such. And the question is, it's not a product issue. Is the big success with this product, with the Vodafone product, the Vodafone use over 10 operators over the last few years. So the products really match or really solve the problem.
spk07: So why now? Why we didn't see this a year ago? I mean, what you're talking about is not something related to the current times. It's more high-level kind of preference of customers. And the question is, Why now? Why in 3Q and 4Q and we didn't see it a year ago? What changed that suddenly your pace of growth is slowing down to negative year over year?
spk01: No, pace of growth on CCAS is not slowing down.
spk07: Right, I'm sorry. I talked about, right, I'm mixing two things. You're correct. But why now? It's still the question is still why now?
spk01: Why now what?
spk07: What I explained... Why now you're talking about the match of products and convincing and educating customers that this is the right thing to do, etc. Why now you're talking about issues? And a year ago, we spoke about growth. I'm trying to understand what deteriorated because... If you told me there is an issue with spending or there is an issue with budgets or something happened and you say, okay, we're waiting for things to recover, I understand why it's happening now. But when you talk about more strategic issue of customer, understanding why they need this application, understanding how to sell it, it's kind of an ongoing thing at the high level that we should have seen the same problems a year ago. This is not something new.
spk01: I'm not sure if we should have seen it or not. I think that as this market is developing and we're interacting with more operators, we ourselves are learning more about this business. A year ago, if you would have asked me, I would have said that I see absolutely no reason why operators, because that's what they were telling us, would not go after The additional revenues that security provides, because even as a value added service, it will make them more revenues than any other value added services. That has proven after, you know, looking at at more operators and spending more time with them that hasn't been proven as not an accurate enough assumption. And we learned more about this market and how it's and how it's evolving. So. You know why now? If you're looking at some tectonic shift that happened in the operators, I'm not sure you will find it. I think what you will find is that the realization that they have to make the strategic shift to be a secure broadband provider, as you look at the whole set of hundreds of operators globally, is happening slower than I would have expected, even though the rate of operators that are willing to go and launch these kinds of services is not that slow. They're still looking to launch security services, but they're not looking at it with the aggressive enough mindset that I would have hoped them to look at it.
spk07: So, Eric, sorry, last question. You're guiding for 25, almost 25% decline year over year next quarter. Can you break it down? Can you break the 25% of What is related to legacy products? What's related to new products? I'm trying to understand why such a... The street was expecting for 8.8% and you're guiding for 25%. That's a big 24.5%. That's a big decline. So I'm trying to understand where is your confidence that things will recover? Because at the end of the day, you're a small company and you're talking about market education, which is a very costly thing. And I'm trying to understand off the decline, What is in your control, meaning things that you can do and products or other go-to-market, things that you can do that will improve and you have some visibility into it or some control over it? And what is more difficult because you need to educate customers that are 100 times bigger than you how to do? And I assume that they are logical, meaning if they see that revenues are coming in, we see them doing it in all other areas. if they see a chance for greater revenues, they are investing in new products. I mean, they're doing it in every other area. So it's hard for me to understand. It's so simple on its face. Cyber leads to higher revenues. It's a big problem for consumers, leads to higher revenues. I have difficulties to understand the concept of them not investing in an area that can generate revenues and is a big problem for consumers. That's why I'm trying to break down the decline and understand what's coming from things that are in your control and what's coming from these areas that you need to educate your customers.
spk01: Tal, I think you're confusing, if I may say so, I think you're confusing two issues. We have two areas of business, right? We have the DPI business, which is a CapEx business, which is the majority of our revenues, and we have the CCAP business, which... is recurring revenues, and that's the cybersecurity business that I've been answering your questions about in the last few minutes. The cybersecurity business is continuing to grow. We're not forecasting any decline for that. It's growing slower than we would like. It's happening a bit later than we would like, but it's continuing to grow, and it's been growing quarter over quarter, and we continue to forecast it to grow quarter over quarter. The decline that we're talking about in the third quarter is in our traditional DPI business, in a lot small. And that's specifically what I discussed in the call, was that there were a few deals, very specific deals, that we had expected to close and deliver partially in the second and third quarter and recognize revenues, and those were delayed to Q4. It has nothing to do with the cybersecurity CCAS business. There were several CapEx deals that got delayed, and that's the reason for the decline in T3.
spk07: Okay. We'll take it offline. That's what I was asking about, the security and the legacy DPI. But we'll take it offline because I want to dig deeper into it. Thanks.
spk01: Maybe just one piece of data. Our previous guidance for Seekers Revenues this year was $7 million, right? And we are still guiding for this number. So this quarter, we didn't change the forecast for CCAST for 2022. Got it.
spk07: Thank you.
spk08: The next question is from Mark Silk from Silk Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thanks for taking my question. Excuse me. So when I started building this position in 2015, the stock price was right around $5. As far as I can see, your DPI is even better than it was in the past, but your CCAS was more of a concept than anything. You had no customers. So now you have, I don't know, 11, 24 but 11 active customers. So I'm just trying to figure this out. The street's really not confident in this area as far as your growth. So can you – I just need some more explanation. So you're thinking of saying to a customer, okay, we'll sign you up, but you're going to pay us some money up front, but you're still going to try to get the recurring revenue model with some of these smaller players, but then some of the big guys, you're hoping that this model will work that you've talked about before as far as you pay the upfront costs, as long as there's a commitment for them to aggressively market it. Can you kind of explain more? Because again, the street is giving you zero value for your CCAS, and I agree. I think this thing is very exciting.
spk01: Okay, so I'll try and explain. Our model for CCAS, our business proposition in CCAS for operators so far has been, okay, sign a contract with us, with a log. We will help you launch the business. We will provide you everything you need. If you need, obviously, software. Maybe you need hardware. Maybe you don't. Depends on the network and so on. We'll provide you guidance. We'll provide you support and so on. Don't pay us anything up front. When you launch the service and as you accumulate more and more customers, consumers, SMBs, so on, you will pay us a lot, X dollars per month or per year for each of those customers that are in service. As you grow the number of customers, we will be making more money and that's our growth. We will still be making that same business proposition to either very, very large operators, and you can imagine that our ability to get very large operators to give us a whole bunch of different commitments is limited, or to operators of reasonable size, that are sizable, that are willing to commit to go aggressively and go to market. They will commit maybe to launch it in all their channels. They will commit maybe to bundle it in some some of their price plans, et cetera, et cetera. And those are open areas for discussion. Now, the smaller operators or operators that are not willing, that are not really huge and are not willing to commit to any aggressive go-to market, we will make them a simple deal from our perspective. We will tell them, okay, so we are not willing to spend the resources, energy, and so on to to make sure that you launch quickly because you're not going to, you will probably not launch quickly and we're not going to work with you day in, day out in order to make sure that you get more paying customers and so on and teach you how to do that. Do whatever you would like with the CCAS service and pay us a fixed amount per month, regardless of the number of customers you have. And maybe we will have a minimum number per month and the cap with a maximum number per month. So, The success will be more dependent on them, and we will be much, much less reliant on it. That's the difference in the approach for the smaller operators. Was I more clear now?
spk02: Yes. So is that just something you just came up with, or is that something you're implementing? And if you are talking to customers about that, what is the reaction to these smaller customers? Yes.
spk01: we are talking to customers about that. Some of the smaller customers tell us they know that we're not interested in doing that. So fine, we just walk away. And some of the customers are saying, Okay, let's talk about the numbers. And that, you know, that, and that those kinds of discussions are going on.
spk02: And as far as discussions, out of the 13 that are, you know, so you have 24 signed up 11 or and use
spk01: None of the contracts that we signed up are using this model.
spk02: No, I understand that, but how many more of the 11 should be online by the end of the year? What would be a realistic number, 15?
spk01: I'm a little cautious because I had expected to have many more customers launch this year, and I was proven wrong. So I don't want to venture a number for the remainder of the year. I do expect additional customers to launch, but I really feel uncomfortable giving a number given my lack of ability to stand behind the previous number I did.
spk02: That's fine. And I hate to bring it up when you're stuck right down at this $5 level. Cause I agree. I mean, I think everyone agrees that your technology is fantastic. It's getting to profitability. So two things is, is the CCAS impacting you? Cause you're not a big company that maybe if you're a, I live in umbrella of a bigger company, you can put more pressure on these people. I don't know if that's the issue. That's something that needs to be discussed internally. And then on another note, when you talk, you know, it's very easy to say, Oh, we'll be profitable in 2024, 2024. But you also have to look at these, some of these loyal shareholders, cause you've had some, activist shareholders and a shareholder that basically gave you $40 million. So there's a lot of support there. I think you have to be realistic that if in 2023, we're not seeing that guide to, if we're not seeing the path to profitability, I think that, you know, tough decisions need to be made because I don't mind holding onto this stock as long as I'm seeing the progression there. And obviously 2022 is disappointing, but we need to see the path in 2023 as opposed to just a promise in 2024. So, You can try to comment on both those things, but I think they're important issues to discuss internally.
spk01: First of all, I really value and appreciate the support we're getting from our long-term shareholders, including yourself and others. And I agree with you that just saying that we'll be profitable in 2024 is not enough, and therefore our plan is to reduce our loss in 2023, so you will see So, first of all, that we will be on the path to profitability in 2024, but you'll also see that next year as well.
spk02: Okay. And the last, the previous caller, I mean, he had the right point. It's kind of like it's a win-win-win. It's a win for the consumer. It's a win for you guys. And it's also a win for these telcos. And that's the most frustrating part. I mean, if someone wants to dump this stock, I don't mind adding more at ridiculously low prices, but Again, I don't think it's a product issue, but hopefully you can get the profitability, and hopefully this new strategy works. And as always, I wish you luck going forward.
spk01: Thank you very much.
spk02: You're welcome.
spk08: If there are any additional questions, please press star 1. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. Please stand by while we poll for more questions. There are no further questions at this time. The next question is from Jeff Bernstein from Cohen. Please go ahead.
spk03: Yeah. Hi, guys. Could you just give a little bit more information on DPI? Obviously, it's a little confusing here. The big impact to the numbers seems to be from the legacy business and delays in closing deals. as opposed to the CCAS business, despite your commentary, as we've all seen for probably over a year, things moving a little slowly in deployments. But it seems like the big change here is DPI. What's going on with delays from customers? Is this related to the macroeconomic issues out there, Ukraine, a lot of your businesses in Europe? Just a little bit more color on DPI.
spk01: specifically in the third quarter, as I said, there were several deals that we had expected to close during the second and third quarter and will most probably be closed in the fourth quarter at earliest. And since they were sizable, then even though we expect that, you know, we look at the DPI mark in our pipeline, we don't see a decline in the pipeline. we will see a decline in the revenues in Q3 like we guided today. Why are these delays happening? As I said in my commentary, I'm not sure I really know. It could be because, you know, these are larger deals and larger deals sometimes take longer time. It could be because of the general economic environment. I am not 100% sure, and I don't know if this is a trend or this is just a combination of very specific circumstances to these deals. I just don't know.
spk03: Great. I understand. And then just a quick follow-up on that. When we built our position, also going back to 2015 or 16, something like that, to me the bigger risk was that the DPI business was going to fall off over time. You guys have done a good job of keeping that business going despite it being a kind of a legacy business and you've taken advantage of some of the consolidation. But the issue was that a fair piece of DPI functionality was being given away in routers and particularly there's competition from guys like Huawei who were giving away those routers. It seems like that competitive environment is changing a bit and that Their changes in the network have increased the value of that core DPI. Just talk a little bit about where are we now on that legacy business? Is that to you still a big risk to this story? Assuming we all believe in CCAS, is the DPI piece still a big risk? Is it less of a risk than it was four years ago? Just talk a little bit more about that.
spk01: I think the DPI market that I see is solid. I see a pipeline that, if anything, is growing, actually. When I look at a competitive landscape, our main competitor there in DPI world is really Sandvine. We do see Huawei. We do compete with them. And many times we win against Huawei as well. I don't see, you know, right now, like we've said in the previous years, I don't see the DPI market growing in leaps and bounds. It's going to be very, very hard to grow significantly in DPI. But we have been growing in DPI over the last few years as evidence from the numbers. And I think that this market is solid, and I think that the business is solid for the foreseeable future that I can see at this point.
spk03: Fantastic. I appreciate that. Thank you.
spk08: There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Entebbe, would you like to make your concluding statement?
spk01: Yes. Thank you. I want to thank you all for joining us today and listening to us. Thank you all for your support, and I look forward to meeting you either privately or in the earnings call next quarter. Thank you very much.
spk08: Thank you. This concludes the Allot Second Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.
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