Ribbon Communications Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Ribbon Communications First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Sahad Najam, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and welcome to Ribbon's first quarter 2026 financial results conference call. I'm Fahad Najam, SVP Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations at Ribbon Communications. Also on the call today are Bruce McClelland, Ribbon's Chief Executive Officer, and John Townsend, Ribbon's Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being webcast live and will be archived on the Investor Relations section of our website at rbbn.com. where both our press release and supplemental slides are currently available. Certain matters we will be discussing today, including the business outlook and financial projections for the second quarter of 2026 and beyond, are forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in our documents filed with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K. I refer you to our safe harbor statement included in the supplemental financial information posted on our website. In addition, we will present non-GAAP financial information on this call. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measures are included in the earnings press release we issued earlier today, as well as in the supplemental financial information we prepared for this conference call, which again are both available on the investor relations section of our website. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Bruce. Bruce?

Great. Thanks, Fahad. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today to discuss our first quarter results and outlook for the rest of 2026. As highlighted on our last earnings call, we ended 2025 with a broadening customer base and increasing backlog, and we continue to expect a much stronger second half with meaningful improvements starting this quarter. Our first quarter revenue was in line with our expectations and consistent with the industry dynamics we outlined back in February, causing a slower than normal start to the year. Visibility into our customers' plans for the rest of the year and confidence in second half growth has improved since the beginning of the year, particularly around the specific areas we highlighted where we were being cautious. Sales in the first quarter were near the midpoint of our guidance, but with stronger than expected demand in India, particularly with Bharti Airtel, who was a 10% plus customer in the quarter. This was offset by lower sales than we anticipated the US tier one service providers, which I'll comment on more in a minute. This shift in mix resulted in lower gross margins and earnings for the quarter. When comparing year over year, As we expected, sales were lower in both of our segments, with cloud and edge down 8% and IP optical networks down 14% in the first quarter. From an end market perspective, the majority of the year-over-year decline was due to lower sales to service providers in multiple regions. Within the cloud and edge segment, sales to service providers declined approximately 5% year-over-year, primarily in the U.S. region across a number of smaller customers. Verizon remained a 10% plus customer in the first quarter, and while voice network transformation activity was lower than we'd expected, impacting our first quarter results, deployment rates are increasing and we anticipate a much stronger second half in 2027. Expansion into the frontier footprint remains a significant incremental opportunity. Within the IP optical segment, sales to service providers in the Asia-Pac region were down year over year following a strong performance from the region last year. Demand in India was stronger than we initially expected, and we are increasingly confident in our outlook in that region for the year ahead. IP optical sales in Europe in the first quarter were lower year over year, primarily due to the completion of a long-term support and maintenance contract with a Tier 1 service provider customer. reducing our IP optical maintenance revenue, partially offset by maintenance increases with our growing installed base. Importantly, IP optical bookings in the quarter were strong at 1.5 times, indicating a much improved quarter ahead. Within the enterprise market vertical, aggregate sales to enterprise, defense, and critical infrastructure customers declined approximately 6% in the first quarter versus last year, with lower cloud and edge sales to U.S. government agencies, partially offset by increased IP optical business with international defense agencies. Voice network modernization projects with several U.S. federal agencies continue to progress towards full deployment in the coming months, and we expect further capacity expansion and new projects in the second half of the year. These modernization projects are mission critical to our Department of War agencies. as these legacy infrastructures are becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. Consolidated gross margin in the quarter was approximately 300 basis points below our expectations, primarily due to the lower network transformation professional services revenue with elevated service expenses. We believe voice modernization initiatives remain a strategic priority for service providers such as Verizon, and we expect activity to accelerate in the second half of the year. In order to support the increased work, we are deliberately retaining key resources and expertise, even though revenue is lower in the first half. While this decision impacts gross margins and near-term profitability, we believe it positions us well to execute efficiently as volumes increase later in the year. This is a deliberate investment in execution readiness. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $8 million below our guidance range due to lower gross profit dollars. Overall book to bill in the quarter was 1.1 times, with IP Optical at 1.5 times, supporting the increased expectations in Q2 and second half of the year. Now a few more highlights in each of our operating segments. In our IP Optical Networks business, we had a number of key wins in several strategic areas, including in the rapidly growing data center interconnect space, we had three new wins across multiple geographies, including Europe, the US, and Asia. Two of the projects involve a regional service provider expanding their network to support data center connectivity in their regions. And one of the projects is a major biotech company connecting all of their major data center locations with a new high capacity optical network. It's great to see our momentum picking up in this crucial high growth area. Similarly, we had five new project awards in the quarter from major energy producers and distributors in countries such as Germany, Vietnam, Singapore, and Colombia. They are all focused on building out secure private command and control networks to keep pace with the critical nature of their business. In fact, two of the new 400 gig networks are leveraging quantum key distribution encryption for enhanced security using our Apollo optical transport platform. In Africa, we have received an award for a major fiber network expansion across three countries, which we expect will exceed over $10 million with first revenue in the second quarter. And here in the US, we now have more than 30 customers who have already deployed our IP and optical products that have been awarded BEAD grants, where we expect incremental new business once funds are finally distributed. Similarly, in our Cloud and Edge segment, we had a lot of activity in the first quarter around several strategic areas. One of the key areas of focus for many enterprise and service provider customers is the adoption of cloud-native technologies to lower cost and reduce complexity, whether in their own private data centers or in public cloud. We reached full commercial deployment of our cloud-native SBC solution with the leading service provider in Japan in the first quarter and have a very extensive program underway with a Tier 1 provider in Europe. This is a fundamental shift in how networks are designed and how software is managed and deployed to achieve higher degrees of automation, elasticity, and reliability. Public Cloud is the ultimate destination for many customers, which is why we've established a new partnership with Amazon Web Services that we recently announced at MWC in February. Our first two customers are now live and providing commercial service with our cloud native SBC running in AWS. This is an important strategic milestone and reinforces our leadership position in cloud native secure voice infrastructure. Over time, we see opportunities to help enable emerging agentic AI platforms to seamlessly support voice within their application environment. In the enterprise market, the financial services vertical is a key focus area for us, where we are widely deployed across many of the leading banks and insurance companies. Within the quarter, we were excited to further expand our presence, adding a new top 20 bank to our customer base in the US. As mentioned on our last earnings call, we had significant voice network transformation orders in the fourth quarter, and we are executing against these new contracts. These programs typically convert to revenue over six to 12 months or longer on large deployments, which positions us for a strong second half. Finally, we continue to make good progress preparing to launch our new AIOps and automation platform Acumen with lead customer Optimum, which we expect to go live later this quarter. We have a growing pipeline of customers spanning a number of different use cases, including mobile and fixed wireless services, emergency E911 services, fiber to the home internet service assurance, and several others. With that, I'll turn the call over to John to provide additional financial details on our results. and then come back on to discuss outlook for the second quarter. John?