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Operator
Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CommScope first quarter 2021 results 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. To ask a question during the session, you may press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I will now like to turn today's call over to Russell Johnson, Vice President, Treasurer, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Russell Johnson
Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to discuss CommScope's first quarter 2021 results. With me on today's call are Chuck Treadway, President and CEO, Alex Pease, Executive Vice President and CFO, Morgan Kirk, Executive Vice President, CTO, and Segment Leader for Broadband Networks, and Bud Watts, Chairman of the Board. You can find the slides that accompany this report on our Investor Relations website. Please note that some of our comments today will contain forward-looking statements based on our current view of our business, and actual future results may differ materially. Please see our recent SEC filings, which identify the principal risks and uncertainties that could affect future performance. Before I turn the call over to Chuck, I have a few housekeeping items to review. Today, we will discuss certain adjusted or non-GAAP financial measures, which are described in more detail in this morning's earnings materials. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures and other associated disclosures are contained in our earnings materials and posted on our website. All references during today's discussion will be to our adjusted results. All quarterly growth rates described during today's presentation are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. I'll now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Chuck Treadway. Chuck? Thank you, Russell, and good morning, everyone.
Chuck Treadway
2021 is already shaping up to be a very exciting year of progress at CommScope. We're putting in place a broad transformational agenda and are beginning to feel the impact of these efforts and our results. This morning, we released our results for the first quarter of 2021, and I'm pleased to report that our consolidated business showed strong performance, led by sustained momentum in our broadband network segment. In our core business segments that will remain after the separation of Home Network's business, sales were up 11% year-over-year, and adjusted EBITDA was up 25%. And just one month ago, we announced two critical components of our CommScope Next initiative. First, that we intend to spin off our Home Network's business into an independent, publicly traded company. And second, that we have taken initial steps to optimize our company's cost profile and free up resources to reinvest and grow. Today, I will provide you with more insights into our broader plans for transforming CommScope into a growth-oriented, profitable technology leader. And I hope that you will share our excitement about the company's future. But first, I'd like to provide more detail on our first quarter results. I'm now turning to slide three. On a consolidated basis, during the first quarter of 2021, Revenue grew almost 2% year over year, and we achieved adjusted EBITDA of $290 million, a 25% increase over the first quarter of last year. In the core post-spin-off business segments of Comscope, namely broadband networks, outdoor wireless networks, and venue and campus networks, our broadband segments stood out with very impressive revenue and profit performance during the quarter, up 29% and 93% respectively. The broadband segment has benefited from a number of industry trends, such as the continued node-splitting activity of cable operators to relieve uplink pressure on their networks, and the accelerating trend of fiber deeper that we see in service provider network upgrades and government spending on rural broadband. In addition, the segment has been investing for future growth. We are developing cutting-edge technologies such as remote MAC5 and advanced optical networking as well as making significant fiber cable and connectivity capacity investments that will benefit Comscope for years to come. In our outdoor wireless segment, as we expected, the first quarter got off to a slower start, especially when compared to the strong first half of 2020. By way of reminder, several North American operators invested heavily in the most recent C-band auction and are actively planning their investments and deployment strategies for this newly acquired 5G spectrum. While this 4G to 5G transition has resulted in lower current spending by these operators as compared to last year, demand for the key macro components supplied by Comscope should increase in the future as 5G rollouts expand and benefit our outdoor wireless segment. We are also making traction in Europe with operator trials for our new integrative passive active antenna technology that is an ideal solution for managing the transition to 5G. In addition, Europe and Asia Pacific saw outdoor wireless sales growth of almost 29% and more than 100% respectively during the first quarter. Our venue and campus segment continues to feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic during the first quarter due to exposure to commercial real estate and ongoing secular declines in our in-building copper portfolio. In addition, our gas and small cell business was soft during the quarter, as some large public venue projects that occurred in 2020 did not repeat. Even with these headwinds, segment performance during the first quarter was steady versus the prior year, with particular strength in ruckus growing more than 15%. As we look forward, we are not yet seeing a full rebound in new-build real estate activity. but we are encouraged by the signs that the rising level of COVID-19 vaccinations is freeing up enterprise network spending, and our copper business has largely stabilized relative to the double-digit declines we experienced in 2020. In addition, we're seeing significant stimulus dollars continuing to flow into education and healthcare, both of which benefited our ruckus business unit during the first quarter. Additional tailwinds include continued strong pipeline of hyperscale data center projects, as well as sustained interest among venue operators of airports, casinos, and hotels in upgrading their in-building and venue licensed and unlicensed coverage through our next-generation ERA DAS platform, OneCell, and Ruckus product portfolios. Finally, an update on our home networks business. We are running on a schedule toward our target date of completing the spinoff by the end of Q1 2022, with the team making excellent progress on the work required to cleanly separate this business from our core businesses. Against the backdrop of that work, and despite healthy demand from our home network products during the quarter, our ability to supply in recent months has been severely constrained by the semiconductor chip shortages that have made global headlines this year. While it is difficult to forecast when these supply constraints will be resolved, this is a transitory issue. Because demand during the quarter exceeded our ability to ship products, home network products ended the first quarter with more than $1 billion in backlog, which is more than twice our average in 2020. We also secured key customer wins in DOCSIS 3.1 gateways, IP streamers, and international video set-top boxes, and have made significant progress in our Wi-Fi 6E, PON, and low-latency technology development. Despite the transitory supply challenges, the significant size of the home networks backlog, combined with the proactive cost management steps we have taken in this segment, bode well for the future profitability performance of the home networks segment once silicon supply normalizes. Before I finish my remarks on the quarter, I would also note that Comscope, like many other global companies, has begun experiencing significant price increases across a variety of inputs and components, including copper, steel, resins, freight, and semiconductor chips. I want to emphasize that as a company, we'll be working hard to utilize all available levers to offset the impact of these inflationary forces on our business. Now turning to slide four, I'd like to shift gears and provide you with some additional context around where we are and where we are heading with our CommScope Next initiative. As I've communicated before, CommScope Next is about three vectors of performance improvement, growth, cost efficiency, and portfolio optimization. I want to emphasize that these three vectors are not separate efforts but are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. As we reposition the company to fully realize the growth potential inherent in our core markets, we are looking for opportunities to invest in both under-penetrated regions and customers, as well as high potential vertical markets and technologies. Fueling this investment will be a portion of the resources we liberate by streamlining inefficient processes, cutting unproductive spending, eliminating redundant processes, and realizing manufacturing efficiencies. As a team, We have aligned around a set of near and intermediate term priorities, and we are already beginning to see some early progress, which I will describe later. As we get the flywheel in motion to drive EBITDA improvement, we will continue to reinvest, ultimately driving the shareholder returns that are more in line with our true potential. Now turning to slide five. I'll share some details about actions we are taking to free up growth capital through cost efficiency. After taking the cost actions that we communicated to you in April, we are now poised to widen the aperture to include areas such as procurement and operations. To focus on just one example, that of indirect procurement, Comscope's annual spend in this area is approximately $1.2 billion, more than half of which is discretionary. But we are not enjoying the full benefits that can accrue to a large-scale focus purchaser. as evidenced by the fact that 20% of our indirect spend is inefficiently dispersed across more than 13,000 vendors. We're undertaking a multifaceted effort to attack this opportunity, and one facet that we kicked off just yesterday is a new pilot program of cost control towers at our Claremont and Catawba North Carolina manufacturing facilities. Cost control towers are a proven method for empowering employees with an owner's mindset to rigorously challenge every dollar in the budget. Once proven out at Claremont and Catawba, we will implement this program broadly to reduce non-critical spending on a company-wide basis. In addition to our efforts around cost, we have recently kicked off the first phase of Comscope Next growth agenda. After working at Comscope for just a short time, It was clear to me that CommScope has a long history of acquiring businesses, but has struggled to achieve consistent organic growth. This has to change. To turbocharge our growth efforts, we must become a market-driven company and get closer to our existing customers and expand our existing customer base so that their voice and needs directly inform our strategies and portfolio decisions. The first step we are taking for our core spend businesses is to transfer most of our sales and marketing resources directly into broadband, outdoor wireless, and venue and campus business segments. This will give every course segment a dedicated go-to-market team equipped with an end-to-end sales toolkit, including marketing, pricing, partner engagement, and sales training and enablement. and it will create an environment where segment-level decisions around R&D and product development are directly linked to the customer value chain. Our new sales structure will also include a key account manager component that will allow us to expand our deep relationships with existing distributors and large service providers. Our key account managers will also broaden our reach to include many untapped service provider markets outside the United States. We will also refocus our sales efforts on select verticals, such as education, healthcare, and hospitality, where we know that our networking products and our solutions offer a unique value to our customers. And we'll use our most innovative technologies, such as our one-cell radio access point and our ruckus cloud and analytics applications to develop tailored and vertical market solutions for sales teams to offer to their customers. These are just some of the ways in which CommScope Next will drive a new level of efficiency and growth for our company. Taken together, we expect these actions to deliver an annual run rate of at least $500 million in adjusted EBITDA improvement within the next three years, split roughly equally between incremental growth and cost efficiency. As the plan begins to crystallize and results materialize through our financial performance in future quarters, we will share these success stories with you. In addition, at our planned investor day later this year, we will be prepared to lay out more detail regarding our expectations about the timing results being reflected in our financial performance, as well as our timeline for getting leverage much closer to our long-term target. Although we are just getting started on this multi-year journey, and we still have much hard work ahead of us, our views around the potential benefits that we can drive through CommScope Next are starting to take shape. With a clear and ambitious roadmap laid out, our entire team is energized by the opportunities in front of us. I'd now like to turn the call over to Alex to provide further details on our first quarter results.
Alex
Alex?
Jeff
Thanks, Chuck, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with a review of our consolidated financial results for the quarter on slide seven. During the first quarter, net sales increased 2% to $2.07 billion, led by another quarter of impressive performance from our broadband network segment. Orders for the quarter were very strong at $2.83 billion, yielding a book-to-bill ratio of 1.37, which represents a significant increase over the Q1 2020 ratio and demonstrates the robust demand we are seeing in many parts of our business. While this high backlog gives us confidence about our revenue prospects throughout the balance of 2021, I would caution everyone that we are experiencing many of the same supply constraints as other technology and manufacturing companies. We're also seeing relatively sharp increases for a range of important inputs and components, including copper, steel, resins, semiconductor chips, and freight. That said, we're working very hard every day to source the inputs and components that we need to meet both rising demand and our customers' expectations. We're also committed to using all available levers to offset as much of the inflationary impact as possible in order to maintain strong margin performance. Adjusted EBITDA of $290 million increased 25%. Adjusted EBITDA margins of 14% improved 260 basis points, and adjusted EPS of 36 cents per share increased 200%. This significant improvement in profitability was driven largely by a volume increase at broadband networks, but also by continued cost actions designed to preserve profit margins in our home network segments. As you know, earlier this month, we announced our intent to spin off our home networks business by the end of Q1 2022. Once the spin has been executed, CommScope Remain Co. will consist of three core business segments, broadband networks, outdoor wireless networks, and venue and campus networks. In light of the spinoff announcement, I would also like to provide you with additional perspective of how these three core business segments performed during the first quarter on a consolidated basis and ex-home networks. Core CommScope net sales increased 11% during the quarter to $1.58 billion, and Core adjusted EBITDA increased 25% to $273 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.3% improved 200 basis points from the prior year. Orders for core Comscope were also strong, totaling $1.88 billion and yielding a booked bill of 1.18. This extremely strong performance in our core RemainCo business clearly shows the potential of the spinoff to drive a new level of shareholder value at Comscope. It also underscores that post-spin, Comscope will consist of a cohesive and well-integrated set of businesses with magnified exposure to powerful technology trends such as 5G, broadband architecture evolution, Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, indoor LTE coverage, and private networks. Turning to slide 8, I'll move to our segment highlights. Beginning with our broadband network segment. Net sales of $791 million grew 29%, primarily driven by the strength in North America and all international regions except for Europe. Within the segment, our network cabling and connectivity business saw significant increased demand for fiber cable enclosures, and our access technology business also experienced strong sales of optical nodes and head-end optics. Adjusted EBITDA of $179 million grew 93% over the prior period, driven primarily by the significant increase in sales volume. Based on the quarter's results, as well as our forward-looking view, we continue to see very favorable momentum for the major product lines within our broadband network segment. With 5G fast becoming a reality, service providers are investing to drive fiber deeper into their networks, not only to serve today's burgeoning customer demand for speed and capacity, but also to prepare for the next wave of MSO and telco competition for existing and new home subscribers. Likewise, we are benefiting from multi-year, government-backed programs to bridge the digital divide, such as the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, and we are closely tracking discussions within the Biden administration to allocate additional stimulus funding for expanded broadband access. In addition, our cable operator customers are contending with shifting consumer usage patterns that have generated unprecedented pressure on the upstream portions of their hybrid fiber coaxial networks. During the quarter, operators worked to relieve this pressure through continued node splitting activity and upgrades to head-end optics. We believe there are new network upgrades in the DOCSIS network, inclusive of AMPs and amps and taps, which will also drive this business in the future. And our video systems business benefited from yet another 5G-related tailwind during the first quarter, as we scored significant new project wins for C-band spectrum reclamation. To take advantage of the favorable demand environment, we have been actively investing in our broadband network segment and will continue to do so through the balance of this year and into next. We will be bringing on new production lines for fiber cabling and connector products with the anticipated payback on some of these investments being as short as six to nine months. Our broadband segment is experiencing periodic, tight supply of certain inputs, components, and raw materials. But fortunately, this segment has less natural exposure to the most highly challenged supply chains, such as that for semiconductor chips. And to date, we have managed the periodic supply stresses relatively well. Turning to slide 9 for our venue and campus network segment. Net sales of $470 million were essentially flat from the prior period. as declines in North America were offset by growth in nearly all of our international markets. Within the segment, strong growth within ruckus was offset by moderate declines from the remaining product lines. Adjusted EBITDA of $20 million declined 47%, primarily due to unfavorable mix and the impact of input cost inflation, mainly copper. While we have been able to pass a significant amount of copper price increases through to enterprise customers, there is some degree of lag in this process that is unavoidable. Nonetheless, we expect these inflationary impacts to be more normalized in future quarters. While our venue and campus segment came under pressure during 2020 due to COVID-19's impact on commercial real estate, during the first quarter this situation improved as developers resumed construction activity on many suspended projects. While this trend is encouraging and it helped our venue and campus segment end the first quarter with substantial backlog, there is still significant uncertainty on the scope and timing of a full recovery in new-build real estate activity. A ruckus business also benefited during the quarter from continued strong federal spending on E-rate and health care programs to bring broadband services and networking equipment to schools and medical facilities. Our AI, cloud, and analytics offerings are also gaining traction with enterprise customers, and we expect continued momentum in the ruckus business as COVID vaccination rates increase and as enterprise clients begin to bring employees back to their offices. During the first quarter, our DAS and small cell business declined, and our hyperscale fiber business was modestly weaker year over year, as both of these business lines faced a tough comparison against the first quarter of last year, when some larger venue upgrade and data center projects were underway. Both of these business lines can experience some quarter-to-quarter lumpiness driven by major project timing. However, we are continuing to see a strong pipeline of new venues and data center projects coming up for bid, which gives us confidence for the remainder of 2021 and beyond. We continue to see our ARA-DAS one-cell and Wi-Fi portfolios as critical components of future enterprise and carrier networks as 5G spectrum utilization increases and the need for integrated indoor coverage solutions grows. Turning to slide 10 for our outdoor wireless network segment. Net sales of $323 million declined 8%, driven primarily by North America and the Middle East and Africa, partially offset by growth in all other international regions. Within the segment, sales declined in both our macro tower and metro layer solutions. This softness was expected and largely timing-driven, as our outdoor wireless sales were more first-half weighted in 2020, but should be more second-half weighted during 2021 due to the expected ramp of 5G macro tower spending later this year. Adjusted EBITDA of $74 million declined 17%, primarily driven by lower volumes. During the first quarter, CommScope saw continued strength in 5G-related orders from T-Mobile as this important customer continues to move aggressively to deploy at 600 MHz and 2.5 GHz spectrums. We anticipate C-band-related 5G spending on CommScope products by other major North American carriers to accelerate later this year and thereafter. However, in the shorter term, we're seeing lower spending levels from these carriers than we experienced during the first half of 2020. As the race to 5G progresses, CommScope offers a broad portfolio of products and solutions that carriers will need to support comprehensive upgrades to their macro tower infrastructure. Telco carriers recognize Comscope as a leading provider of everything on the macro tower except radios. This does not include only base station antennas supporting 5G frequencies, but also a wide range of complementary products and solutions that will be critical to operators as they manage the added complexity of 5G tower configurations. These solutions include heliacs, coaxial, and fiber cabling. PowerShift power management, cabinets, and steel reinforcements, which together with our passive and active antenna solutions provide a complete toolkit for 5G tower upgrades. Comscope also continues to innovate around 5G use cases, as demonstrated by our integrated active-passive antenna solution in partnership with Nokia. We now have over a dozen trials of this product ongoing with European, Middle Eastern, and Latin American customers, and we anticipate that this hybrid solution will gain interest among U.S. carriers as a unique and cost-efficient tool for managing the 4G to 5G transition. I would add that after several quarters of softness, our metro cell business is starting to pick up as municipalities begin to clear some of the COVID-related backlog of zoning and permitting applications for the metro layer densification projects that will also be required to provide seamless 5G connectivity. Turning to slide 11 for our home network segment. Net sales of $489 million declined 19% and across most regions. Despite healthy demand for both video and broadband gateway products during the quarter, the home network's revenue decline was driven almost exclusively by an acute shortage of semiconductor chips. Adjusted EBITDA's $16 million increased 38% from the prior year despite this top-line decline. This improvement in profitability was primarily driven by the significant cost optimization actions taken over the past 18 months to better align the segment's cost structure to its recent revenue performance. The combination of strong demand and constrained ability to ship products led to a sharp growth in backlog during the quarter, which has risen to more than two times historical averages, the highest level since we acquired the business in 2019. We believe that these supply chain difficulties are transitory and that we will eventually convert this backlog into sales. However, our current view is that we may not see a return to a fully normalized silicon supply environment until early 2022. Given that we have been very proactive in taking costs out of the Home Networks business, we're confident that this segment will show improved financial results once the silicon shortage subsides. Within the video business unit, Home Networks continued to score wins with new and innovative IP streamer products. This is particularly true in international markets, where we've had success during the first quarter with new orders for streaming devices in Europe and Zapper boxes in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as traditional set-top wins in key Eastern European countries. For the broadband gateway business, home continues to build on multiple DOCSIS 3.1 gateway wins in the highly strategic Latin America market and is also gaining traction for the XD7 platform with North American syndication players. Turning to slide 12 for an update on our cash flow. For the first quarter, cash flow from operations was a use of $124 million, and adjusted free cash flow was a use of $135 million. As a reminder, the first quarters typically are weakest cash flow performance quarter due to multiple seasonal factors. Comparing to the prior year, cash flow was impacted most notably by a higher annual bonus payout for Comscope employees, as well as increased tax and interest payments during the first quarter of 2021. Working capital was a net use of cash of approximately $123 million during the quarter, primarily driven by increased accounts receivable and inventory. However, for the full year, we expect networking capital to be a source of cash for the company as the first quarter's AR and inventory build converts to cash and as we continue to find additional efficiencies within inventory and extend vendor payment terms. Turning to slide 13 for an overview of our liquidity and capital structure. During the first quarter, our cash and liquidity remained strong as it had been throughout the year. We ended the quarter with $326 million in cash and no outstanding draws under our AVL. Our total available liquidity for the quarter was over $1 billion. Given that the first quarter is seasonally our weakest cash flow quarter of the year, we did not repay any debt during the quarter beyond the $8 million of required term loan amortization. With the year-over-year growth in first quarter adjusted EBITDA, the company ended the first quarter with a net leverage of 6.7 times, a significant improvement from the 7.1 times at the end of the year. Note that a partial driver of this leverage improvement was our inclusion in pro forma adjusted EBITDA of significant additional projected cost savings related to our Comscope Next cost efficiency initiative. Inclusion of these cost savings, reflecting cost actions already taken, as well as specific planned future actions, is also in line with our loan compliance reporting practices. We remain committed to our longer-term goal of significantly reducing leverage and expect to provide additional insight into our path and timetable toward this goal as we further refine our Comscope Next strategy around cost efficiency and growth. Finishing up on slide 11 for an update on 2021 demand trends in our end markets. For our broadband network segment, the trends of operators driving fiber cable and connectivity deeper into their networks is showing considerable staying power for the balance of 2021 and beyond. And addressing pressure on uplink capacity and downlink throughput through node splits in the access layer continues to be critical in network performance. Customer demand in our converged network solutions unit is holding steady, and we're seeing continued opportunities for our video systems business portion in areas such as the reclamation of C-band spectrum and ad insertion. Expanding our capacity to produce fiber optic cable and fiber connectivity remains a top priority for us, and we're committed to directing additional capital investments where necessary to meet the high and growing demand. And as previously mentioned, we expect our broadband segment to benefit significantly from stimulus spending under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund in the second half of this year. Within our outdoor wireless segment, we maintain our expectation that the release of new mid-band spectrum through the C-band option will drive significant 5G spending by the major U.S. telco carriers to upgrade thousands of macro cell towers across the U.S., We expect continued good business with T-Mobile spending for 5G deployments, and we believe that 5G build-outs by other major U.S. carriers will expand from an initial focus on OEM radios and active antennas to a more balanced procurement strategy, including passive antennas and ancillary tower equipment, areas of strength for Comscope, all this starting later in 2021. Meanwhile, our funnel of international opportunities, particularly for our integrated active and passive antenna solution in collaboration with Nokia, is showing considerable promise and will be a significant focus as we roll out the international growth component of CompScope Next. Our venue and campus business is showing encouraging signs of returning to growth and generating meaningful profit as commercial real estate developers regain confidence and as structured cabling markets stabilize from last year's steep declines. It is still too early to forecast a full-scale recovery in new-build real estate activity by the end of 2021. We're confident that government spending on education and health care will support momentum in ruckus sales during the balance of the year. Ruckus orders were strong during the first quarter, and we see this trend continuing for the remainder of 2021. Through CommScope Next, we're pivoting to refocus the venue and campus segment on key vertical markets, such as education, healthcare, federal, and hospitality, where our connectivity and networking solutions provide a uniquely compelling value proposition, and we expect these efforts to begin showing results by the end of 2021. While we did not win large-scale projects for data center fiber and our large venue upgrades utilizing our DAS and small-cell solutions during the first quarter, We continue to see a healthy pipeline of smaller projects coming up for bid that should benefit these businesses during the balance of 2021. Wrapping up with our home networks business, we have seen a healthy resurgence of customer demand for this segment's video and broadband products. However, as we noted, we expect silicon supply constraints to have a material impact on home networks revenues throughout 2021 and potentially into 2022. As we work through these transitory supply chain issues, our goal will be to continue to optimize the cost profile of the home business as well as to move forward rapidly with our plan to spin off home networks into a standalone, publicly traded technology leader. Before turning the call over for Q&A, I just want to echo Chuck's earlier comments about the longer-term potential of Comscope Next. It is the goal of Comscope Next to transform our company into a higher growth and more profitable enterprise with a tightly focused technology portfolio. We are energized by our vision of adding at least $500 million of annual run rate adjusted EBITDA from cost efficiency and growth, and we believe that our employees and our shareholders should be as well. While the hard work of this goal is just beginning, you should know that we as a management team have no greater priority than being successful in this operation. And with that, we'll open the line for Q&A. Operator?
Operator
At this time, if you would like to ask a question... press star one on your telephone keypad. Again, if you'd like to ask an audio question, press star one. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Mita Marshall with Morgan Stanley.
Mita Marshall
Great, thanks, and congrats on the quarter. I guess a couple of questions for me. You know, can you give a sense on the supply chain shortages you're seeing and just whether it's giving you more visibility from customers for the year and just how that frames kind of your outlook for how the year develops? And then just maybe more context on ability to pass some of the cost increases that you're seeing on to customers. Does it kind of vary meaningfully by product? Just any context there would be helpful. Thanks.
Chuck Treadway
Okay. In terms of supply chain shortages, the main one that we're experiencing is in the home business with our silicon products. And we actually have to, you know, work with our customers there. And obviously there's allocations and, you know, there's opportunities to expedite. And we're working with our customers to help pay for that. And we're communicating directly with them on those types of opportunities to make sure we get supply there. If you think about the other businesses, you know, it's kind of a start and stop. I mean, we seem to have a problem, you know, in a day, and we get it resolved in the next day. We're able to work through it pretty well. We have a pretty large supply base. We are seeing some inflationary effects. But I would say we're not really shut down by any component shortages other than other than silicon, and I wouldn't even say we're shut down. We're just not getting the supply we need. And in terms of inflationary effects on the other products, many of our customers, we have contractual relationships where there's formulaic opportunities to raise price depending on what's going on with the inflationary components of the product.
Jeff
The only other thing I'd add, Chuck obviously mentioned the semiconductor issue. I mentioned in my remarks capacity constraints within our fiber cable and fiber connectivity. Those are internal constraints, and we're making investments in the factory that will begin to come online in the later part of the year. And those investments really are meeting the significant increases in demand that we're seeing. that we're seeing. So that's the only other supply chain issue that I've mentioned, but that's obviously fully within our control and we're taking steps to unlock it.
Mita Marshall
Great. I guess I was asking more from a perspective of, you know, have your customers kind of shared order trajectory over the year to assure that, you know, you have supply chain?
Morgan
So, yes, some of our customers have worked with us to give us a longer range output and in some cases cases, actual orders to follow for some of these more critical components. As an industry, we're all trying to project out what those things will be and manage that supply chain appropriately. So I think it's a work in progress, but certainly we've gotten closer with our customers on that.
Operator
Great. Thanks. Your next question is from the line of George Nodder with Jefferies.
George Nodder
Hi, guys. Thanks a lot. Maybe just to kind of expand upon that prior question, do you have any sense for how much cost inflation you're seeing in the business? Is there a dollar value you can kind of put on that? And then how much of that are you able to offset with price increases? It would be interesting to kind of see what that inflation component is translating into in terms of the EBITDA in the business.
Jeff
Yeah, you know, it really depends on what element you're looking at. You know, in the semiconductor space, it's sort of in the mid single digits in terms of percent. You know, freight is probably quite a bit higher than that. You know, in ocean freight, it's, you know, close to 70%. You know, inflation, air freight, you know, a little bit less in sort of the 14% zone. You know, copper, you know, obviously you've seen substantial increases in copper prices, which you can tell if you just look at the, you know, the LME index, similarly with steel. So it really depends. You know, I think one of the things that... is important to consider is that, you know, a number of our products have a fairly, while the commodity input is important, it's a lower percentage of the overall value-add of the product, so it's not, wouldn't be fair to say that the price of our product is going to increase directly in line with the price of whatever the underlying commodity is. And that's really the negotiation that Morgan was talking about, is helping our customers understand what these inflationary effects are, working with them to mitigate those through a combination of productivity actions and pricing and preserving our margins. So that's sort of how we're managing the profitability picture.
George Nodder
Got it. Okay. I assume when you roll it up, there is a negative net impact on EBITDA. Is that fair to say?
Jeff
We're going to – these impacts, George, are impacting every single player, not only in the technology space but in the broader manufacturing space. And, you know, both our competitors know that as well as our customers. And I think, you know, we have every expectation that we'll be able to offset this pressure.
George Nodder
Great. Thank you very much.
Operator
Your next question is from the line of Jeff Cabal with Wolf Research.
Jeff Cabal
Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I would like to delve into the new constructs around the cost reduction plans and EBITDA growth forecasts. I'm wondering if you could help us frame kind of where you are measuring that $500 million from, over how long should we get it or in what stages should we get it? And are we going to see all of it or should we expect that you'll reinvest some of that $500 million? And so the overall EBITDA isn't going to be $500 million higher by the end of the three years, but somewhat less. Sure, Jeff.
Jeff
So let me kick it off and then – others on the team may want to pile in. So to start with, you know, Comscope Next is $500 million. What we've said is at least $500 million of EBITDA improvement, 50% of that coming from growth, 50% of that coming from cost. So, you know, To the extent we have greater cost savings than that $250 million, we may choose to reinvest those in incremental growth, or we may choose to bring those to the bottom line. Those decisions haven't been made, but we are committing to $250 million in cost-related EBITDA improvement and $250 million in growth-related EBITDA improvement. Those savings are net of headwinds, so the way to think about modeling it is if you take our you know our ttm uh our ttm evita you back out uh the the impact of um the home networks actions that we've taken you know you add your 500 million on top of that that gets you to a new run rate and then over and above that we do expect some cyclical recovery uh in the market so this is these are actions that we take above and beyond just normal market recovery So hopefully that gets you to an EBITDA number. And then in terms of timing, what we've said is this is a three-year aspiration. And obviously the cost actions we started in April, so those are, you know, already in flight. There's more actions that Chuck referred to around procurement. Both on the indirect side and the direct side, there's actions being taken on manufacturing efficiency. And then, you know, the investments that we're making in growth both in new markets and in verticals will likely be, you know, farther out in that three-year time horizon. So maybe I'll pause and see if Chuck would like to add anything on top of that and ask you if that answered your question.
Chuck Treadway
I think you said everything.
Jeff Cabal
Let me follow up. briefly, and just to say, do you have a sense of what year one or year two might look like? Like the cost reductions might be heavily weighted to the front end of your timeline, for example.
Jeff
We've not provided and we're not undertaking to provide that level of detail at this point. I think it's reasonable to expect when we get when we get to our investor day at the end of the year, that will give you some indication on kind of the velocity of how this materializes in the P&L, but we're not at that level right now.
Jeff Cabal
Thank you all.
Jeff
Your next question comes. It's okay, operator. I thought Jeff had a follow-up question. I didn't hear him.
Operator
Your next question is from Samik Chatterjee with J.P. Morgan.
Alex
Hi, this is Joe Cardoso on for Sonic. The decline in Metrocell, our Metro and Macrocell solutions, which is not much, doesn't get much surprise given the reasons you highlighted. However, curious to hear if you can provide any additional color around how that opportunity in wireless plays out in the second half of the year and what your large customers have communicated to you in terms of the deployments there. Thank you.
Jeff
Yeah, so I'll let Morgan pile on. You know, what we said, we said this at the end of last year, is, you know, there are two North American operators in particular that spend, you know, heavily on CBAN spectrum. We anticipated that, and it actually exceeded our expectations. There's a natural pause. right now as those operators basically are developing their strategies for how to light up that spectrum. Again, we fully expected that. That's what they communicated to us, and that's, in fact, what we're seeing. We expect that their spending will ramp, and, in fact, we're seeing a lot of their orders coming in now already in the second quarter. So that spending is ramping just as anticipated. And we do expect a stronger second half for outdoor wireless than we saw in the first half. A couple of other points that I'd make. The first is one of the reasons that the year-over-year comp is difficult is because we saw exactly the opposite trend in 2020, where the operator spending was actually a very front-end weighted because they were trying to get their investments behind them to focus on C-band. So you're lapping a tougher comp with 2020. And then the last point I would make, last two points, one is on the margin. The reason the margin picture looks the way it does is because of this North America mix versus some of the rest of the world where we actually did see growth. And then finally, you know, I think it's really important for those on the call to understand within the outdoor wireless networks, it's much more than just base station antennas. So as the spectrum gets deployed, there's need for new power solutions. There's need for reinforcing the infrastructure with steel. There's need for new cabinet solutions. All of that is product that we provide in this space.
Morgan
Yeah, so I'll just add on to Alex's comments. So we do have a E-B-T-R strategy, everything but the radio. And that applies between to 5G as well as it did to 4G. in in the rest of the world uh the mid-band spectrum has been available for a longer period of time so that the various startups of of spectrum usage uh dense urban area coverage and then moving out toward toward less dense areas has occurred so we have a pretty good road map of what's going to happen in the united states and we're very comfortable with the product portfolios we have on a going forward basis that we will be able to take advantage of that both by integrating the active antennas where they are being used with passive antennas in an effort to improve the ability of putting things on towers, reduce weight, wind loading, et cetera, as well as for the non-active antennas, which we expect will be a significant portion of the market. So from our perspective, this is going along according to plan. In terms of the mattress soil market specifically, that was caused – there was a decrease in new site builds last year due to permitting and other events, and we expect that that, too, shall mitigate as the years go on, and we will continue to take advantage of that market as well.
Alex
Got it. And then for my second question, you mentioned the benefits from our materializing in the second half of this year. but just curious to hear your thoughts around your positioning for government stimulus plans in other regions of the world, like by the UK or the European Commission, and what are your expectations around the scale and timing around those? Thank you.
Morgan
Yes, I'll take that one as well. So the RDOF funding in the United States is rather significant. It's meaningful in the rest of the world, but not of the same scale. However, we are positioned in a similar position. These RDOF fundings are really, for us, based on providing fiber connectivity to the various places that they're improving. In Europe, there are places such as the U.K. and Germany that are building out much more heavily than places that have already built out, say Spain as an example of that. And we believe we're well positioned for all the things that you need to build this network. That is not the active gear. At the moment, we really don't participate in the active gear portion of this. This is a network. In terms of when this is happening, it is an ongoing piece of business, and it's more fragmented than in the United States. So you won't see an enormous burst, but you'll see a specific country or a specific customer that will go on a major build, and, in fact, we're seeing one of them right now.
Alex
Got it. Appreciate the color, and thanks for the question.
Chuck Treadway
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question is from the line of Rod Hall with Goldman Sachs.
Chuck
Yeah, thanks for the question. I have two for you. One is on the cash flow and the working capital. Alex, I noticed your accounts receivable is up a lot. I guess that's related to the backlog, but I'm curious whether that is likely to be a drag on cash flow as we look forward, or is this kind of a one-off adjustment to this new normal level of receivables? So I wonder if you could comment on that, and then I have a follow-up.
Jeff
Okay. No, so our cash flow is typically weak in the first quarter. It actually strengthens as we go through.
Chuck
Just to be clear on that, just to jump in, it's quite a bit weaker than normal seasonality. That's why I asked the question.
Jeff
So it's typically weak in the first quarter. And, yes, there is some timing-related impact on AR just related to collections activity. So there's nothing unusual other than just the timing of collections. The other thing that typically happens in the first quarter is we have cash taxes, and then we also have bonus payouts. So bonus payments for our annual incentive plan this year were quite a bit larger than – than they have been in the last couple of years, which is creating a bit of a headwind. And then the final issue is around inventory. So because of the significant backlog as well as some of the components shortages, we have, you know, much more kind of in-process inventory. And then on on freight because there's been some bottlenecks in the ocean supply chain. We've got a little bit more a little bit more in-process inventory on the ocean. But, you know, in general, what I would say, and you actually kind of mentioned this, the fact that we're seeing working capital grow is completely reflective of a significant demand environment, which as we work through the backlog and as we deliver the product, you know, that's going to convert into EBITDA and ultimately into cash.
Chuck
So do you think, I mean, it feels like a lot of this is one-off in nature, though, and probably doesn't, I mean, we shouldn't expect continued increases, or do you think we should be kind of anticipating a little bit of that early in the year and then it writes itself later in the year, or how do we think about trajectory here?
Jeff
Yeah, so you will see cash flow ramp fairly significantly through the remaining quarters, so we don't anticipate, you know, being a use of cash for any of the remaining quarters. You know, that being said, we are seeing a strong demand environment, particularly in the broadband network segment. And, you know, as I think Chuck mentioned in his remarks, you know, we do believe this is sustainable demand. And part of the beginning of 5G is related spending, as well as cable MSOs upgrading their networks. So I wouldn't say the demand environment is more of a one-time event. I think we do see that as sustained. But certainly, you know, the bump in inventory and the collections activity is more one-time in nature.
Chuck
Okay. And then I just wanted to ask on millimeter wave deployments in Europe, what you guys are seeing. Can you give us any color on You know, just kind of what you're seeing there, how much you would expect in the next year, and so on. Thanks.
Morgan
Sure, I'll take that. On the millimeter wave side of the world, I think the answer is not much. Most of the operators in Europe are really focused more on that mid-band spectrum than any sort of high-band spectrum, and we expect that will continue.
Chuck
Okay, great. Thanks, Warren.
Operator
Your next question is from the line of Sammy Badry with Credit Suisse.
Alex
Hi, thank you. I just want to go back to the CommScope Next strategy and the $500 million of EBITDA. How should we be thinking about timing for this? Is this going to be balanced over three years, or is this going to be weighted, you know, up front or even back end, just to understand how is it going to hit the income statement?
Chuck Treadway
Right. We had a similar question earlier. What I would say, I'll take this one instead of Alex. What I would say is what we're doing right now is we're building the plans. We have a clear line of sight on where we want to go and where we're going to target. Now we're building the plans to do that. And obviously we did take some costs out in April that we shared with you in our last call. But in addition to that, we have to build all the plans up, and then we have to have execution plans to implement them. And as we're building them, by the time we get to our earnings, let's say our investor day, we'll be able to share with you more details on how those will roll out in time. But right now those plans are still being built, and we're looking forward to sharing with you later in the year on that during an investor day.
Alex
Got it. And then one other follow-up is, You called out RDOF benefits in your broadband network segment, but does RDOF have benefits into other segments as well in your business?
Morgan
So, yes, they do. It's less direct than the broadband segment, but certainly RDOF funding has been used not just for providing a fixed line to rural homes, but being able to provide this via broadband by wireless, so there is an opportunity there for us as well, and that attaches in a lot of cases to the fiber. And part of RDOC funding went to satellite as well, and after those satellites get to the ground, there is some opportunity for us to take those signals and play there as well. So, yeah, this is a very important program for CommScope throughout and impacts all of our businesses.
Alex
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question is from the line of Simon Leopold with Raymond James.
Simon Leopold
Thanks for taking the question. First, maybe a quick one and then more of a trending one. In terms of the quick question, there were a lot of questions earlier that were qualitative around input costs. I guess just simply put, do you expect your gross margin in the June quarter will be higher or lower than what you just reported in March when you net all these factors? And then I've got a follow-up.
Jeff
Yeah, look, Simon, there are a lot of things that go into gross margin at the risk of stating the obvious. We do see, you know, improved demand in outdoor wireless, which will drive a favorable – in North America, which will drive favorable mix. We have – substantial volume in continued network cable and connectivity and access technologies deployment, which will drive scale in the broadband segment to improve margins. We are seeing strong growth in ruckus through education, hospitality, healthcare. You know, that has substantial gross margins in ruckus, so that flows through quite nicely. So the mix impact has a significant impact. effect on margin. You know, I tried to be as clear as I can be in a public setting that we're going to work to offset absolutely as much of the inflationary impact as we can. So I think it's reasonable to expect that gross margin would be consistent with what we've seen in the past. And I think that's probably about as much detail as I can give, given our guidance strategy.
Simon Leopold
Okay, I appreciate it. I had to try. So I'm going to try another question. I wanted to see if we could talk a little bit about how 5G wireless architectures might be different for your business, specifically the increase in massive MIMO and integrated antennas. I certainly heard you in terms of your partnership and work with Yokia, so I'm not ignoring that. But just wondering how – the mix of increased integrated antennas and massive MIMO can affect comscopes, everything but the radio strategy. Thank you.
Morgan
Yes, so I think I'll take that, Simon. So with every generation of wireless, there is a continued push to integrate. We saw this in 4G. Some of the OEMs had products that did this, and they participated in the early days of the market. Mid-days of the decade, those products went kind of out of favor. We think this is different this time, that active antennas are an important portion of the 5G rollout. However, it is not the only portion of the network. And many of the problems of putting an active antenna on a tower are very similar to the problems of putting a passive antenna on a tower, namely wind loading and weight. And we are critical to doing that. We're critical to putting the various antennas behind the other antennas or within the other antennas that exist on the tower. And so while we will participate in some portion of the actual active antenna itself, and we are trying to participate with more OEMs, We will participate with many of the operators in integrating the passive and the active solutions together in a way that makes it possible to roll these out to all the cell sites that they're going on. In addition to the antenna itself, which we tend to focus on a lot, there are advantages to CommScope when you do go to these active antennas, and I'll just give you a very simple one. An active antenna consumes a lot more energy than its predecessor because it has many, many more transceivers than its predecessor. That power needs to come from somewhere, and, for example, our power shift technology becomes almost mandatory in an active antenna environment. networking system versus a passive antenna and a traditional radio where it is not required at all. So there's additional business opportunity when active antennas are used for CommScope. So we think there will be a mix, both active and passive antennas in 5G. We think it will be different from 4G, and we think we'll participate in all the phases of this.
Simon Leopold
Great. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Jeff
You're welcome. Thanks, Simon. Operator, we probably have time for one more question if there's any more in the queue, and then we can take everything offline.
Operator
Yes, sir. Your final question comes from the line of Amit Daryani with Evercore.
Chuck
Thank you. I'm glad I switched to the line. Chuck, I have two questions. I'll ask them both to you at the same time. The $500 million cost reduction plan that you're posting, Do I assume that $120 million of that will be used to offset the whole network spend and the remainders for Core Comm Scope? Is that fair or is this entire $500 million for Core Comm Scope? And then secondly, you touched on procurement optimization that you're starting to undertake. Is that what will result in the entire $250 million savings or is there more things like ERP and real estate optimization you can do to get to that number? So just more details on what is driving the $250 million piece of cost optimization.
Chuck Treadway
I'll start with your cost optimization piece. Is direct and indirect material will be a significant part of it. But obviously, we also had a reduction in force that was announced where we said we would cover the cost. We would cover the reduction of EBITDA from the home networks business with that, plus allow us to invest with this money. So if you think about the cost, it's direct, indirect, It's structuring. I would also think there's going to be opportunities to unlock more savings through our operations. We're working with our teams to start a grassroots effort to look at opportunities to improve productivity, to increase capacity, because demand continues to grow, and we're hoping we're going to get some leverage from that. So that's also another piece of it. So I guess your first question was more related to You kind of broke up a little bit in the beginning.
Chuck
Yeah. The 500 million EBITDA expansion plan, right? Do I think of it as 120 million will offset the whole network spend and 380 flows to Core Comscope, or is it all for Core Comscope?
Jeff
So just to clarify what we said. So we said that the 500, 250, and 250 is net. And so the way to think about it, and we also said that we are going to more than offset the loss in EBITDA from home, which is what Chuck mentioned. And so the way to think about just doing the math is take our trailing 12 months, and then you can subtract the home networks trailing 12 months EBITDA. Then you can add 250 in cost. You can add 250 in growth. and then you can assume some level of just cyclical market recovery above and beyond that, and that should give you a waterfall to what exactly we're saying.
Chuck
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Chuck Treadway
Perfect. Well, I'll let Chuck just close up with some closing remarks. Yeah, look, we'll keep everybody. Thank you so much for your interest in Comscope. We appreciate your questions and your support. We look forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you.
Operator
This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
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