Aviat Networks, Inc.

Good afternoon. Welcome to Aviate Networks' first quarter fiscal 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note this conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Keith Faneron, Vice President of Global Finance and Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you and welcome to Abiot Networks Fiscal 2021 First Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast. You can find our Form 10Q press release and updated investor presentation in the IR section of our website at www.abiotnetworks.com, along with a replay of today's call in approximately two hours. As for today, Pete Smith, Abiot's President and CEO, will begin with opening remarks on the company's first quarter, followed by Eric Chang, our CFO, will review the financial results. Pete will then provide closing remarks on AVIAT's strategy, outlook, and follow by our Q&A. As for the safe harbor, during today's call and webcast, Mazarin may make forward-looking statements regarding AVIAT's business, including but not limited to statements relating to financial projections, business drivers, new products and expansions, the impact of COVID-19, and economic activity in different regions. These and other forward-looking statements reflect the company's opinions only as of the date of this call and involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ material from these statements. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or make public any revision of these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Additionally, during today's call and webcast, management will reference both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our press release, available in the PIR section of our website at www.avionnetworks.com and financial tables therein, which include GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation and other supplemental financial information. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Pete. Pete?

Thanks, Keith, and good afternoon, everyone. I hope everyone is remaining safe and well as we continue to face the challenges of COVID-19. Thanks for joining us to review what was in many respects a record quarter for the company and a quarter where our execution across our key long-term focus areas yielded many positive results for the business. During the quarter, we benefited from improving sales, operational execution, progress on our restructuring efforts, as well as increased software sales and improved mix. Adjusted EBITDA more than doubled in the first quarter coming in at 8.4 million for the quarter, up 4.2 million or 103% versus the same period last year. Up over 52% from our fiscal fourth quarter 2020 and equal 62% of our reported full year 2020 adjusted EBITDA of 13.5 million. Our balance sheet remains strong with our net cash position up and many more. As I've mentioned on our prior calls, we are striving to demonstrate consistency and improvements in our performance by being laser focused on four key focal areas, increasing revenue, capturing AVIAD's differentiation, driving out costs and ultimately increasing overall shareholder value. The first quarter, we made excellent progress on all these fronts. Due to strong, focused sales execution, partnership expansion, and new customer wins, first quarter revenue increased almost 6% sequentially from our fourth quarter 2020, and 13% from the year-ago quarter. North American revenue increased over 14% year-over-year, with international revenue returning to growth, improving 10% year over year. During the quarter, we continued to capture Aviat's differentiation with wins for our multi-band transport solution for 5G, demonstrating the viability of our offering. Our 10 gigabits capacity single box multi-band radio platform provides the industry's simplest multi-band solution, which lowers a customer's total cost of ownership are reducing microwave spectrum costs. We recently received initial orders for our frequency assurance software, or FAST, a unique and proprietary software system for interference monitoring and analysis, providing customers increased network reliability and uptime. The Aviat FAST solution provides our customers with necessary data analysis to work with regulators regarding interference issues and is critical to the reliability of mission critical microwave links, especially with the emergence of Wi-Fi 6E, which allows unlicensed devices to operate in a key microwave band in the US. As I've mentioned before, our software and services platform is a key focus for long-term growth. And while we were pleased with the progress we've made thus far, we look forward to announcing new software solutions that will benefit our customers. Additionally, we also released our Extra High Power Mission Critical Radio into the U.S. federal market, which will allow us to expand our business in this important segment. We continue to make progress on improving and optimizing our cost structure and remain on track to realize annual cost savings of $3.5 million as a result of our announced restructuring plans and other cost savings initiatives. We currently expect approximately $2-plus million of these savings to benefit fiscal year 2021 with significant credit to all of our Aviat team members, our suppliers, and partners. Before turning the call over to Erin, let me provide a couple of additional observations and insights. First, during the first quarter, our North America business continued to perform with the team working hard to expand sales and seize upon Aviat's unique products and Services Differentiation. The North America team continues to drive our core products for 5G applications. Emerging 5G networks require backhaul solutions that have both the capacity to meet the growing data demand and the automation to simplify the ever-growing complexity of networks. Our solutions deliver capacity and reliability innovations in all parts of the network to meet mobile operators' 5G challenges. and finally, the team continues to leverage the industry's only e-commerce platform, the Aviat Store, to provide service and value to our rural broadband customers. With the Aviat Store, where customers can receive quotes and purchase Aviat's microwave products directly online, we are removing margin stacks from the business. As such, we are disintermediating the value chain to provide a more economical sales channel with higher customer satisfaction to these rural customers. We believe we are well positioned to capitalize on the significant growth opportunities in rural broadband, driven in part by over $30 billion of current and planned FCC funding to subsidize the cost of building new network infrastructure and upgrading current networks for growing rural broadband needs. We've already seen growth in our rural B2B business recently from the $1.2 billion CAF2 Auction, and believe there could be meaningful upside in that business from the $20 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and the $9 billion Fund for Rural America, each launched earlier this year. Turning to international growth opportunities, our international team began to implement our new commercial sales strategy, which includes defending Tier 1 telecom business, winning new Tier 2 accounts, expanding our reach through partnerships, and capturing value where we are differentiated. While early in its execution, we are starting to see the benefits of our international strategy pay off, with international revenues up more than 10% versus the year-ago period, reversing the trend of contracting international revenues since fiscal 2018. To further support our international strategy during the first quarter, we strengthen our international sales team with the hiring of a new Vice President of Sales for Europe, Middle East, and Africa Regions, Steve Tateta, and a Vice President of Sales for our Asia Pacific Regions, Wen Lian. We welcome Steve and Wen to the Aviat family and look forward to great things from this organization. With that, let me turn the call over to Eric to review our financials before coming back for some final comments.