10/21/2020

speaker
Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, you will need to press the star 1 on your push-button phone. I would now like to turn the conference over to Eric Weiland. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Christine. Good afternoon, and welcome to next year's third quarter of 2020 Financial Results Conference Call.

speaker
Eric Weiland

Joining us from the company are Mr. Patrick Lowe, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Brian Murray, CFO. The format of the call will start with a review of the financials for the third quarter provided by Brian, followed by details and commentary on the business provided by Patrick. We then have time for any questions. If you have not received a copy of today's press release, please visit Netgear's investor relation website at www.netgear.com. Before we begin the formal remarks, we advise you that today's conference call contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding expected revenue, operating margins, tax rates, expenses, and future business outlook. Actual results or trends could differ materially from those concentrated by these forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in Netgear's Periodic Findings with the SEC, including the most recent Form 10-Q, Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and Netgear undertakes no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. In addition, several non-GAAP financial measures will be mentioned on the call. The reconciliation of the non-GAAP to GAAP measures can be found in today's press release on our investor relations website. At this time, I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Brian Murray. Brian Murray Thank you, Eric. and thank you everyone for joining today's call. I'm very pleased to share with you our third quarter 2020 results. With continuing robust demand for our leading edge products, our team once again delivered a strong quarter with exceptional growth in revenue and profit. We were again constrained on the supply side for our CHP business, saw modest recovery in our SMB business, yet still delivered strong revenue growth and record non-GAAP operating profit. Net revenue for the third quarter ended September 27, 2020, was $378.1 million, up 42.2% year-over-year and up 35% on a sequential basis. This strong increase in revenue was primarily due to remarkably robust demand for our CHP products, powered by unprecedented bandwidth consumption in the home where people have transitioned to conduct the majority of their daily lives. This included products sold to service providers with associated revenue reaching $74.1 million, our highest level since the first quarter of 2016. We continue to win with our leading edge Wi-Fi 6 offerings and strong presence in both online and retail. Our supply chain team did an outstanding job in the quarter, giving product to our retail and service provider partners, outperforming our expectations. The team managed raw materials, manufacturing schedules, and transportation, optimizing with air freight in particular to meet more consumer demand than we had previously forecasted. With that said, We expect to remain supply constrained through the first quarter of 2021, primarily due to a worldwide shortage of advanced chips such as Wi-Fi 6. Our non-GAF operating income at $41.4 million was a quarterly record, with a reported non-GAF operating margin of 10.9%, as NECIR showed our ability to leverage our strong revenue growth. For the third quarter of 2020, net revenue for the Americas was $277.9 million, which is up 55.5% year-over-year and up 37.4% on a sequential basis. The Americas continued to benefit from increased demand for CHP products in both the retail and service provider channels generated by the shift to work-from-home environment. The median net revenue was $63.7 million, which is up 28.6% year-over-year and up 31.7% quarter-over-quarter, also driven by demand for CHP products in response to work from home and seen across both the retail and service provider channels. Our APAC net revenue was $36.5 million, which is down 2.9% from the prior year comparable quarter and up 24% sequentially. both largely driven by our service provider business in the region. For the third quarter of 2020, we shipped a total of approximately 4.7 million units, including 3.5 million loads of wireless products. Shipments of all wired and wireless routers and gateways combined were about 2 million units in the third quarter of 2020. The net revenue split between home and business products was about 84% and 16% respectively. The net revenue split between wireless and wired products was about 75% and 25% respectively. Products introduced in the last 15 months constituted about 27% of our third quarter shipments, while products introduced in the last 12 months contributed about 25% of our third quarter shipments. From this point on, my discussion points will focus on non-GAAP members. The reconciliation from GAAP to non-GAAP is detailed in our earnings release distributed earlier today. The non-GAAP gross margin in the third quarter of 2020 was 30.3%, which is up 90 basis points as compared to 29.4% in the prior year comparable quarter. and up 70 basis points compared to 29.6% in the second quarter of 2020. While the mix of our SMB business, which historically carries a relatively higher gross margin, declined year over year, and although we spent dramatically more on air freight in Q3, we were more than able to offset these gross margin headwinds through lower promotional activity on our CHP products. Total Q3 non-GAAP operating expenses came in at $73.2 million, which is up 27.8% year-over-year and up 18.1% sequentially. The team did a great job with revenue growth far outstripping OpEx growth to deliver strong leverage on our top line and produce record quarterly operating profit. As always, we will continue to manage our expenses prudently, while also ensuring that we are investing sufficiently in the growth portions of our business for future success. Our headcount was 803 as of the end of the quarter, up by 15 from the previous quarter. We continue to manage our headcount, but we'll add resources to invest in areas that we believe will deliver future growth. Our non-GAAP R&D expense for the third quarter was 6.2% of net revenue as compared to 6.8% of net revenue in the prior year comparable period and 6.9% of net revenue in the second quarter of 2020. To continue our technology and subscription service leadership, we are committed to continued investment in R&D. Our non-GAAP tax rate was 17% in the third quarter of 2020. In the quarter, we benefited from favorable one-time adjustments to domestic tax liability. This contributed about $0.08 to our non-GAAP diluted EPS. Looking at the bottom line for Q3, we reported non-GAAP net income of $34.7 million and record non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.13. Turning to the balance sheet, We ended the third quarter of 2020 with $306.8 million in cash and short-term investments, up $48.3 million from the prior quarter. Additionally, our inventory decreased by $6.3 million in the quarter as we continued to deliver on strong demand in the Americas and EMEA, while remaining supply constrained, which left us unable to increase our own inventory holdings. We hope to reverse this trend in the first half of 2021 and move our inventory position closer to historical norms. In Q3, we generated $42.9 million in cash flow from operations, which brings our total cash provided from operations over the trailing 12 months to $184.6 million. We used $2.5 million in purchases of property and equipment during the quarter This brings our total cash use from capital expenditures over the trailing 12 months to $8.5 million. We remain confident in our ability to continue to generate cash and expect to further increase our cash position again in the fourth quarter. In Q3, we chose not to repurchase any shares under our open buyback program, and our fully diluted share count is approximately 30.7 million shares. especially in times of uncertainty like these, we recognize the importance of maintaining a strong cash position and will balance our practice of repurchasing shares with our desire to maintain a strong balance sheet. As I previously mentioned, we will need to replenish our own inventory levels. Thus, we would expect to consume some of our cash in the first half of 2021 as a result. Now, turning to the results of our product segments. The connected home, which includes the industry-leading Nighthawk, Orbi, Nighthawk Pro Gaming, and Mural Brands, generated net revenue of $316.7 million during the quarter, which is up 66.1% on a year-over-year basis and up 37.7% sequentially. The year-over-year and sequential increase was attributable to heightened demand across both service provider and retail channels. In the third quarter of 2020, service provider revenue was the highest it has been since the first quarter of 2016, while non-service provider revenue grew an impressive 56.8% as compared to the comparable prior year period. In the third quarter, despite supply headwinds in our Wi-Fi fixed products, we again held a strong leadership position in U.S. market share in consumer Wi-Fi, coming in at 44%. and we fully expect we can grow our share once again, once we overcome the Wi-Fi 6 supply constraints in the second quarter of next year. The SMB segment generated net revenue of $61.4 million for the third quarter of 2020, which is down 18.4% on a year-over-year basis, but up 22.7% sequentially. As we expected, our SMB business recovered slightly, as evidenced by the strong sequential growth. The year-over-year decline stems from the pandemic and corresponding business closures. On the product front, our wireless LAN and PoE Plus and PoEV switching lines continue to perform well in the market. Our market share in switches sold through the U.S. retail channel came in at 49% in Q3. I'll now turn the call over to Patrick for his commentary. Thank you, Brian. With the pandemic continuing around the world, many adjustments that seem temporary are cementing their place in our lives. People and companies have been forced to adapt. At work, some companies are embracing work from home on a permanent basis. Others are moving to a hybrid model of working from home and at the office in roughly equivalent amounts. In addition, the flexibility to work from anywhere has led to a massive migration away from crowded, high-cost areas to zoom towns in more isolated, less urban areas, leading to an increase in new or upgraded network connections. Regardless of when the pandemic ends, what's clear is that the future work has forever changed, and that means working from home at least part of the time is here to stay. And what counts as home may be defined by multiple occasions. At home, people are adapting to the new environment by learning how to pursue all of their daily activities virtually from home. Eight months in the making, There's more from home. Transition goes well beyond work and school. Families are pursuing a myriad of activities virtually. Everything from watching movie premieres and live music concerts, to shopping for groceries, to virtual gators, to doctor's visits, to fitness classes, and checking in on family and friends across the country or even across documents. These activities are taking place through their laptops, tablets, and phones. And families are recognizing the need for a fast and reliable Wi-Fi connection that spans their entire home to support the increased bandwidth consumption and multitude of connected devices utilized across their home. Whereas previously, these activities might have been optional, people have been forced to try them virtually and are now discovering they actually enjoy and even sometimes prefer them to the traditional way of doing things accelerating adoption and making these virtual activities an increasingly permanent part of our lifestyle the nagia team is working around the clock across the globe to serve this need as you can see from our results The aforementioned changes continue to drive strong growth in demand for our CHP products as people upgrade their Wi-Fi networks and discover new uses for mobile hotspots. In Q3, we made dramatic adjustments within our supply chain and worked closely with our channel partners to ramp production and delivery. I'm proud to say that the team at Netgear continued to execute at the highest level and exceeded my expectations on what we could deliver for our CHP business. Yet, even with these efforts, we remained supply constrained on CHP products as we are more dependent on advanced chips to power Wi-Fi 6 and our competitors who remain stuck on Wi-Fi 5. Similarly, in our SMB product portfolio, we were caught off guard by the surprisingly strong demand for low-end PoE switches and Wi-Fi 6 wireless mesh access points for home office and home-based business uses. We expect supply constraints to continue to limit the non-carrier side of CHP in Q4, But if our supply chain team can repeat their Q3 performance, we believe we can deliver to roughly the same revenue level we saw in Q3. On the service provider side in Q3, we were able to set aside the demand for mobile hot stops needed to fight the pandemic in the U.S. for the start of the new school year and for our first responders. we expect our 24 service provider revenues to return to roughly q2 level much has been made of the technology transitions that have been accelerated by more from home with these transitions we believe many of the activities that are now virtual will remain virtual and as such this represents a significant change in the way people conduct their lives The need for robust and pervasive Wi-Fi connectivity constitutes a fundamental need, and we believe this has recast our total addressable market on an upward basis going forward. Nigeria has a unique set of attributes that give us a defensible advantage. A longstanding, trusted brand with loyal followers, A well-deserved reputation for high-performance Wi-Fi products that are based on our leading-edge tri-band technology. Best-in-class channel relationships and a growing portfolio of value-added subscription services. This is why we are confident that Netgear will remain the Wi-Fi and networking vendor of choice. for both consumers and small businesses as more of our lives transition to virtual for the long term, and why we will continue to grow with the market. And it is more evident now than ever that our early investment to be a leader in next-generation technologies, namely tri-band Wi-Fi systems and minimum-wave 5G hotspots, we continue to pay dividends. In Q3, we saw a strong demand for our tri-band Wi-Fi 6 Orbi and Orbi Pro. While our three-pack configuration starts at $499 and can exceed $1,000 with Orbi Pro, we cannot keep them in stock across all the markets that we participate. From Tokyo to Hong Kong to Paris to Munich to Toronto, and especially right here in the U.S. Customers are telling us, even with their older Wi-Fi 5 smartphones and devices, that they are seeing a significant performance boost from our Wi-Fi 6 Orbi systems due to our innovative radio circuits and antenna designs. We are ramping production of our Wi-Fi 6 Orbi as quickly as we can, But at this point, we don't believe we will catch up to demand until Q2 next year at the earliest due to the Wi-Fi 6 chip supply shortage. Moving to the SMB business, the team continued to drive forward with a focus on products geared towards home offices and home businesses and delivered a sequential growth of 23% quarter-over-quarter. We faced the same headwinds as last quarter with channels that rely on personal interaction, like our VAR partners who do IT installations. During the quarter, we introduced the world's first Wi-Fi 6 mesh access points with app-based remote management. Just like its CHP-OB counterpart, we could not keep them in stock. We are seeing strong demand for our low-end power over Ethernet switches for home office setups, as remote workforces use them to connect to IP phones, desktops, printers, and access points. We believe this demand will persist as workforces increasingly become more distributed post-pandemic. We are making progress with our pro-AV business as well, The team also delivered marquee wins, such as with the PGA Tour in the US and the 2021 America's Cup in New Zealand. In Q3, we announced a brand new line of AV switches that support the audio over Ethernet protocol, AVB. This new M4250 line of AV switches was well received by AV integrators around the world. We expect a shutdown in volume in Q4. We look forward to continued improvement in our SMB revenue in Q4, with the year-over-year decline continuing to reduce from what was experienced in Q3. The increased importance of Wi-Fi in people's homes And the need to connect, manage, and secure more devices to that Wi-Fi is also translating into more subscribers to our premium paid services. We again delivered record progress in growing our recurring revenue stream. Beginning the quarter with 293,000 paid subscribers, we increased our new paid subscribers by 26% sequentially. adding 76,000 in the quarter to end with 369,000 paid subscribers. In only three quarters, we have exceeded our goal for all of 2020 of doubling our subscribers, a notable achievement and positive sign for our profitability growth in the years to come. I would also like to take a moment to welcome Sarah Belafast to the next year board, having led product development at Top Software First, consumer-facing brands such as Groupon and Orbis, and now Chief Product Officer at FanDuel. Sarah will add valuable apps and services product strategy and consumer engagement expertise to our board. I look forward to working with her as we grow our subscription business. And with that, I'll turn it over to Brian Murray to comment on our opportunities and obstacles in the coming quarter. Thank you, Patrick. While we are confident in the ongoing strength of in-market demand for home networks, there is still considerable uncertainty around the effects of COVID-19 on the global economy and our supply chain. This makes our outlook difficult to forecast. As such, We are not in a comfortable enough position to provide financial guidance for the fourth quarter. We would now like to answer any questions from the audience.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound or hash key. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Adam Tindall from Raymond James. Your line is open.

speaker
Adam Tindall

Okay, thanks. Good afternoon and congrats on a very strong quarter. Patrick, I just wanted to start with a question on the CHP segment, exit service provider piece. It was obviously very strong. I think you mentioned going forward that you were expecting, you know, kind of Q4 to look at sort of the same level as Q3. We would typically expect it up sequentially just from seasonal patterns. So maybe just some color on why it would be flat this year. Was there any pull forward? And as you talk about Q4, any comments on expectations for the holiday season and promotional activity based on Prime Day and what you've seen so far? Thanks.

speaker
Eric Weiland

Well, basically, as we mentioned, that we would depend on our supply team to make products available. And it's all supply-bound. We do believe that the market has a much bigger appetite to absorb whatever we could ship to the market for Wi-Fi 6. But unfortunately, we just don't have enough chips to provide to the market. So, yes, we expect that, you know, it would be a seasonally strong Christmas. All right. But we're all limited by supply. Now, Q3 was the first quarter that people are really experiencing these newfound virtual experiences. So clearly, the market surge was high in Q3. We expect the market surge will come down a little bit in Q4, but then it will be offset by the Christmas seasonality. However, unfortunately, it will also climb down.

speaker
Adam Tindall

Okay. I mean, is there a way that you could potentially help us quantify how supply-bound you are at this point so we have an idea of what this tailwind that you're likely going to have as supply catches up to demand would look like over the next few quarters?

speaker
Eric Weiland

I mean, the easiest way to look at it is that, I mean, we used to own 50% market share in North America, and our market share in Q3 was a little bit depressed to 44%. And that 6% is clearly worse, you know, our supply shortage. Plus, because we are the market leader, we believe that if we had more inventory, one, the market will grow even faster. And secondly, you know, we believe that we'll actually gain share. So that's the easiest, you know, quantification of how much we're limiting ourselves as well as the market.

speaker
Adam Tindall

Okay. And maybe just a follow-up for Brian. I mean, margins were obviously a bright spot as well. I just wanted to see if we could dig into a little bit more of the puts and takes on a go-forward basis for gross margin in particular. You have some air freight, some supply chain. You've got promotional activity upcoming. Just the different buckets that impact gross margin and how we can think about that line on a go-forward basis.

speaker
Eric Weiland

Yeah, I think if you're talking about Q3 to start, I mean, I think clearly a couple things with the driving forces. One, our overall product profitability has increased. A mix of Wi-Fi 6 products is certainly contributing to that. And the elevated top line is certainly helping from a top line leverage standpoint. Those two factors are really driving the Q3 performance. We certainly did spend a fair amount more in terms of air freight as we had suggested we would do in July, but we were able to pull back in terms of promotional activities on CHP products to more or less offset that. If you look out to Q4, I think from an operating margin standpoint, which is what we're primarily focused on, there are a couple of headwinds. I think overall it probably takes a step down from Q3 levels by about 100 basis points. One is just top line leverage. We mentioned that the opportunistic demand that we saw in service provider that we expected in the back half of the year, we were able to capitalize on a lot of that in the third quarter. So we're naturally going to step down to about 45 million in Q4. And now And even though there's still going to be supply constraint in Q4, promotions will certainly continue to be limited. I do think they'll take up just a bit as we have pre-planned activities around the holidays. So with that, I think the net of all that is it's probably about 100 basis points stepped down in Q4 from Q3.

speaker
Adam Tindall

Got it. That's helpful. Thanks and congrats again.

speaker
Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Hamid Khorasan from BWS Financial. Your line is open.

speaker
Hamid Khorasan

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. First off, Patrick, could you elaborate on your commentary during your statement? We're talking about the CHP side being the same, if you could source enough chips. You guys drew down inventory, so you would actually have to bump up the amount of chips that you purchase to reach the same kind of revenue. Is that the right way of thinking, or are you just saying on a regular basis without the drawdown on inventory?

speaker
Eric Weiland

No, I mean, what we're saying is that even we draw down the inventory on our own, even we draw down the inventory in the channel, even we ramp up the production quantity the market demands to exceed all of that combined and there's just not enough supply of chips that we want to really feed the market that's all we are we talking about understood so how would you be able to achieve a flattish kind of performance for q4 um given that you were you've been drawing down your own inventory um in q3 Exactly. So that means we're depending on an increased supply of the chips in Q4 versus Q3, which is not surprising because we placed the orders earlier. The chip's lead time is now six months. So that means Q4 is basically a result of our placing of chip orders back in April, May.

speaker
Hamid Khorasan

And then do you think this is the amount of chips that you're able to generate? Is that an allocation from the producers that you might be losing out from competitors? Or is this just not enough production?

speaker
Eric Weiland

Well, number one, as you probably know, there's limited capacity of 14 nanometer semiconductors. There are not that many founders in the world that can produce that. And secondly, all the client devices now support Wi-Fi 6. So we're in the market competing for substrate, competing for 14 nanometer production volume against the same kind of Wi-Fi 6 chips that people want for their cell phones. With the Apple iPhone 12, Huawei P40, and Samsung, you know, the new Fold 2 and the new S12, Clearly, I mean, among the networking vendors, we have the biggest allocation. But in the overall scheme of things, there are just so many competitors in the electronic industry that need these 14-millimeter chips.

speaker
Hamid Khorasan

Are you going to put a greater emphasis on Wi-Fi 5 and Q4? Sure.

speaker
Eric Weiland

No, there's no going back. I mean, as you probably knew all along in the past three quarters, we have been telling everybody that we are rebalancing our inventory, both in the channel as well as within ourselves to clean ourselves up of Wi-Fi 5. And as you can see, it's pretty clear, right? Because we're the only one that have supply, ample supply of Wi-Fi 6. we don't have to do promotions. So as a direct result, you know, our operating margin improves significantly. Well, if everybody else has fewer, even fewer Wi-Fi 6 supply than we do, and then we trash the Wi-Fi 5 prices, so... There's just no money to be made there. And we're pretty confident once we get every quarter basis, we'll get more allocation of Wi-Fi 6 chips. And then once we balance demand and supply, then we'll be on our way to getting a lot of share.

speaker
Hamid Khorasan

Okay. Great. Thank you.

speaker
Eric Weiland

Sure.

speaker
Operator

Your next question comes from one Jeffrey Rand from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

speaker
Eric Weiland

Hi, congrats on another great quarter. The year-over-year declines in your SMB business moderated as you expected. Is there more untapped potential with the at-home office in this business? And do you think the SMB business can really return to growth before we get a vaccine? We believe that we will get pretty close to previous level or even slight growth as we continue to... To be able to get more Wi-Fi 6 products even in the SMB channel, as I mentioned just now in prior discussion, we were totally caught off guard by the strong demand of our Wi-Fi 6 mesh access points. People are cramming for it, and these days it's pretty impossible to find the availability of our SMB wireless access point, mesh access points, on any website every day. So we do believe that once we get more of the allocation of the chips, then yes, definitely it will grow. The other thing we see, it's very interesting also, with a lot of calls in the staff being distributed back to home, work from home, there's a tremendous demand of our POEs, which is at the low end, especially the 5 port and the 8 port. because they are using them in their home offices for the call center people to connect to the IP phones and to their wireless access points. So I think there's tremendous opportunity. And then on the pro AV side, we still see a lot of uptake in the transition from the traditional AV into the AV over Ethernet. We've recently outfitted quite a few railway networks, both in the U.S. as well as in Europe, with the terminals display and in-train display with ProAV. So I think the ProAV business will continue to give us the opportunity to grow. So in 2022, we are pretty optimistic for our SMB business. Great. And then just as a follow-up, I think Amazon released its first Wi-Fi 6 mesh network recently. Can you talk about how this impacts your business? Does it start to put pricing pressure on your Wi-Fi 6 products when supply constraints end, or does it help the general acceptance and credibility of Wi-Fi 6? Wi-Fi 6 acceptance is huge. As we mentioned in our discussion just about 15 minutes ago, that we're seeing tremendous demand, not only in the U.S., where people appreciate technology. We're seeing tremendous demand on our Wi-Fi 640 around the world, even in India. And the fact is that people... find out, and it's through word of mouth, that when they buy the Wi-Fi 6 Audi, not only that you could enjoy the bumped up speed if you have a Wi-Fi 6 phones or tablets or laptops, you actually would benefit even if you have Wi-Fi 5 devices because of our design. One is tri-band. Two is our design of the radio circuits and the antenna, which really boosts the performance and coverage. So, anyway, yes, you're right. I mean, Euro or Amazon introduced their Wi-Fi 6 product, but primarily it's dual-band. They have only one model of so-called tri-band. It's not tri-band. but it's not comparable to our performance and, you know, actually a little bit more expensive than ours as well. They introduced their tri-band about $500, but the bulk of their focus is on the dual band, which we don't really play. I mean, we play in the tri-band area, so most of the demand that we're seeing right now for our Wi-Fi 6 products for mesh is about $500 price point. So it's like we're in two different worlds. I mean, we're more in the Volkswagen world and we're more in the BMW world. Great. Thank you. Sure.

speaker
Operator

Your next question comes from . From , your line is open.

speaker
Hamid Khorasan

Brian, I hate to ask you to repeat yourself. There was a question asked about your margin structure right before my line was silent. So I do apologize to you and others on the call, but I'm hoping we can repeat whatever it is you said. I do apologize.

speaker
Eric Weiland

No problem, Paul. So what I was saying for Q4, we would expect operating margins to take a step down of about 100 basis points off of Q3, largely due to losing some of the top-line leverage. We talked about pulling forward a lot of the second half opportunity and service provider and getting it into Q3, and then stepping that down into Q4 at $45 million, we're going to lose some top-line leverage And then additionally, while we'll still hold back on a lot of promotions until we get supply in a healthier state, there were some pre-planned commitments around the holiday promotional period that we'll obviously be going forward with. So those two things would drive about 100 basis points step down sequentially.

speaker
Adam Tindall

Brian, I forget when you've addressed this in the past, but I assume expedites are costing you something on the road of 100 or so basis points to gross margin or by the operating margin by the month.

speaker
Eric Weiland

I would say it's more, but I would say we're offsetting that entirely with the reduced promotional efforts that we typically would have on our CHP products.

speaker
Hamid Khorasan

So are you costing that assuming that you eventually, which you will, get to a point where supply constraints become totally alleviated?

speaker
Adam Tindall

Should we not assume a full 100 plus basis point benefit to the margin structure at that point, whenever that is?

speaker
Eric Weiland

Well, I mean, I think there's certainly an opportunity for 100 basis point margin expansion as we move into 2021. I think Patrick kind of outlined some of the opportunities on the SMB side where, you know, we may look to see something in the neighborhood of 10% growth in 21. We'll return to kind of more of an average $35 million a quarter run rate on service provider once we're behind this Q4 remaining opportunistic demand in service provider. But we'll think we'll offset that entirely with continued growth in the PHP non-carrier portion of our business. So with that kind of performance, we think that there's a 100 basis point margin expansion opportunity like we need them.

speaker
Hamid Khorasan

All right. And a question for both of you. Other than the obvious, major issue with supply constraint.

speaker
Adam Tindall

What are you all most worried about?

speaker
Eric Weiland

Hello? I think these days the big concern is getting supply caught up. We've capitalized on this opportunity and getting supply caught up, which we said is going to take us to Q2 to do so. So that's just number one. And then number two... I was going to say, what's the second thing you're most worried about? Well, the second thing is anything that we cannot control. I mean, all the two political situations, a possibility of a third or fourth wave of COVID, I mean, all these uncertainties. But we'll assume that it's not going to happen.

speaker
Hamid Khorasan

The clear message today is that you've got More than the demand relative to your supply.

speaker
Eric Weiland

Demand is not an issue for the foreseeable future. That's not an issue. No. Demand is not an issue. I will pass it on. Thank you, gentlemen. Sure.

speaker
Operator

Your next question comes from a line from Bloomberg. Your line is open.

speaker
Eric Weiland

Great. Thank you for taking my question. Good progress on the subscriber revenue numbers. In terms of the supply constraints, Patrick, how should we think about balancing out the go-to-market portfolio as it relates to volume versus ASP? And in that, I mean, you know, are you going to go for the $999, you know, whatever it is, the 863 product versus a single access point product?

speaker
Adam Tindall

No, I mean...

speaker
Eric Weiland

No, I mean, we will do whatever the customers want. We believe that there's a wide spectrum of applications. Not everybody could afford $400,000 to begin with. So for those customers, we see them buy extenders, all right, so just a single router. So we also are engaged in that particular marketplace as well. And we do have wife and six-month-olders that cost only about, you know, $129, $149. So you're going to do the whole spectrum of things. But clearly... As you probably know, I mean, the biggest margin on the higher-priced product is generally true. If you buy a car, as you know, a Mercedes makes a lot more money on the S-Class. Same thing. Tesla makes a lot more money on the Model S and Model X. So it's the same thing. No denial. I mean, for those products that are about $500, you definitely make more money on them. Right. And somewhat of an intermediate challenge strategy question for you, Patrick. It sounds as if you're looking at the hybrid work from home opportunity as a more permanent type of opportunity. Is there anything on the product development front that you're doing that may help enhance your positioning to take advantage of that opportunity? Yeah, we mentioned it in our discussion already, right? If you are just an ordinary consumer and you're going to completely configure your own home networks to do this more from home, then very likely you either galvanize towards a router plus one or two extenders, which is a cheaper solution, or you go for a mesh network. And if you're thinking of a mesh network for uncompromised performance, then you're going to pay $500 plus to buy a Netgear product. But if you're thinking of just paying about, you know, $150 to $300, then, of course, in-market, you get three to two funds. You get Netgear, you get Amazon, you get Google. Google doesn't provide Wi-Fi, so yes. All right, so that, we still have a pretty significant following and we have a fair share in that between $150 to $300 market. So that's the consumer side of things. But on the other side of things is that you are told by your company to work from home, such as the distributed call center people, or you are allowed by the company to work at least half of the time or most of the time from home anywhere. And maybe your company would give you money to buy equipment. In those cases, they're more on the commercial grade. then they're most likely to buy, you know, commercial-grade routers, plus a switch, but some, you know, mesh at this point instead of consumer-grade. And we're doing it. So you've got two different solutions. And we've seen both have very strong links going into 2021. Got it. And lastly, Brian, I believe you said that it wasn't a demand issue going into – 2021, and I'm going to get a little greedy here. Any preliminary thoughts on seasonality going into the first quarter and second quarter? Typically, it's down 15% sequentially, up a 4Q, and then flattish up on 2Q. Any preliminary guidance, commentary on CSP business? So I would say stay tuned. We're going to be announcing our analyst day here at the first half of December in the coming weeks, and we're certainly going to dive into that. But as we said earlier, with supply constraints lasting through Q1, certainly supply will be dictating what we deliver in the first part of the year. Got it. It was worth a shot. Thank you.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. If there are no further questions at this time, I'll turn the call back over to Patrick Law.

speaker
Eric Weiland

Sure. Thank you, Christine. I would like to once again thank you, listening to the call, and thank our team members and partners for the hard work and flexibility during this time. Without them, we would not be able to deliver that many products that our customers really need and want. We look forward to serving a newly expanded market, one in which we have a clear and defensible leadership position. We aim to deliver continued growth in the coming quarters, and we remain confident the components of our strategy will be strong contributors to our success this year and beyond. And I look forward to sharing more with you on our progress throughout the next few months, first with the analyst day, in the early part of December and then in our next earnings call in February. Thank you.

speaker
Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.

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