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Viavi Solutions Inc.
8/12/2021
Hey, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the VIP Solutions fourth quarter and fiscal year-end 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to Bill Ong, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Ashley. Welcome to VRV Solutions' fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 earnings call. My name is Bill Ong, Head of Investor Relations. Joining me on today's call are Oleg Hykin, President and CEO, and Hank Dirksen, CFO. Please note this call will include follow-up statements about the company's financial performance. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainty that can cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations and estimations. We encourage you to review our most recent annual report and SEC filings, particularly the risk factors described in those filings. The proposed looking statements, including guidance we provide during this call, are valid only as of today. VIARI undertakes no obligation to update these statements. Please also note that unless we state otherwise, all results except revenue are non-GAAP. We reconcile these non-GAAP results to our preliminary GAAP financials and discuss their usefulness and limitations in today's earnings release. The release plus our supplemental earnings slide, which includes historical financial tables, are available on VIARI's website. Finally, we are recording today's call and we'll make the recording available by 4.30 p.m. Pacific time this evening on our website. I would now like to turn the call over to Henk.
Thank you, Bill. Fiscal Q4 2021 reflects a strong quarter with VIAVI, record revenue, non-cap profitability, and operating cash flow for a given June quarter. Fourth quarter revenue came in at $310.9 million. which exceeded our guidance range of $290 to $310 million. Revenues grew 16.6% from a year-ago level and set an all-time Viavi Q4 record. Consistent with the prior quarter, the year-over-year performance continues to reflect robust recovery from last year's pandemic impact, as well as continued strength in wireless and fiber and solar demand for anti-counterfeiting products. BIAVI's operating profit margin at 20.8% expanded 120 basis points year-over-year and 60 basis points sequentially and exceeded the guidance range of 19.5% to 20.5%. EPS at 22 cents per share exceeded the high end of the 18 to 20 cents guidance range and increased 4 cents from the year-ago period. In addition to strong operating performance, we benefited from a lower than anticipated tax rate of 17%. The share count of 241.9 million shares includes the dilutive impact of the convertible nodes of 10 million shares. Now moving to our reported Q4 results by business segment, starting with NSE. NSE revenue at $236.5 million increased 13.5% year-over-year, exceeding a guide range of $219 to $235 million. Within NSE, NE revenue increased 17.6% from a year ago to an all-time record high of $212.7 million. reflecting strength for our fiber, wireless, and cable products. SE revenue at $23.8 million decreased 13.5% year-over-year and increased 17.2% sequentially, a result of the lack in recovery for our assurance and data center products. NSE gross profit margin at 63.4% decreased 120 basis points year-over-year. Within NSE, NE gross profit margin at 63.1% decreased 60 basis points from last year, primarily due to unfavorable product mix. SE gross profit margin at 65.5% decreased 500 basis points year-over-year due to lower revenue. NSEs operating profit margin at 15.1 percent exceeded the high end of a guide range of 13.5 to 14.5 percent, primarily as a result of operating leverage on higher revenue. Year over year, operating profit margins decreased 180 basis points, mainly a result of lower gross profit margins. Sequentially operating profit margins improved by 520 basis points as a result of leverage on higher revenue. Now turning to OSP. Fourth quarter revenue at $74.4 million, up 27.8% year-over-year, was at the high end of our guided range of $71 to $75 million. The strength was driven by robust anti-counterfeiting demand, offset by a modest signal decline in our 3D sensing products. Gross profit margin at 57.5% increased 650 basis points year-over-year, driven by higher volume and favorable product mix. Operating profit margin of 38.8% was within a guided range of 38 to 40% and increased 940 basis points from last year's levels as a result of the aforementioned higher gross profit margin. Now moving to our fiscal 2021 performance. While the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the start of fiscal 2021, Viari experienced a sharp recovery beginning in late last calendar year with a strong finish to record revenue at $1.2 billion, up 5.5% from fiscal year 2020. OSP reached a record revenue of $361 million, up 25.8% year-over-year, while NSE at $837.9 million saw a modest decline of 1.4% in revenue. The AVI's full-year 2021 gross profit margin at 62.7% increased 70 basis points from a year ago level, reflecting leverage on volume, resulting in improved cross-profit margins within our OSP segment. Operating profit margin at 21.1% expanded 250 basis points, reflecting gross profit margin expansion combined with operating expense control. Operating profits at $253.5 million grew 20.2%, increasing $42.6 million year-over-year. EPS at 83 cents per share grew 13.7%, or 10 cents from last year. Stronger volume in our Asia-Pacific region resulted in a shift in jurisdictional mix of income contributing to an increased tax rate of 19.4% in fiscal 2021 compared to 17.5% in fiscal 2020. The share count used includes the dilution of the convertible notes and is calculated both on a full year basis and on a quarterly basis. Hence, the resulting full-year EPS of 83 cents is one cent lower than the summation of the individual quarters. Now turning to the balance sheet. The ending balance of our total cash and short-term investments was $703.7 million. an increase of $25.6 million sequentially from the prior quarter and up $159.7 million compared to the prior fiscal year. Operating cash flow for the quarter was $63 million, a four-quarter record and an increase of $35.8 million compared to $27.2 million in the year-ago period. We invested $25.4 million in capital expenditures during the quarter, compared to $8.3 million in the prior year. The increased capex reflects a new production facility in support of increased future demand built in Arizona. On a full year basis, we generated record operating cash flow of $243.7 million, up 79.7% and reflecting an increase of $108.1 million compared to fiscal year 2020 at $135.6 million. On July 1st, 2021, the 1% convertible notes due in 2024 with a face value of $460 million met the 130% pricing trigger, resulting in the notes becoming convertible at the option of holders until September 30th, 2021. As a result, we have reclassified the $414.2 million book value of the notes to short-term debt and reported the difference in the book value and the face value of $45.8 million as temporary equity on the face of the balance sheet. This change has no impact to reported interest expense, EPS, or the diluted shares calculation. In addition, we are not aware at this time of any note holders electing conversion. In Q4, we repurchased $10.9 million of Yavi stock at an average cost of $16.77 per share, including commissions. In total, as of the end of the fourth quarter, we repurchased $87.1 million out of the $200 million authorized under the share buyback plan announced in September 2019 at an average price of $12.98 per share. We will continue to be opportunistic in our share repurchases, and we continue to develop and intend to execute on our capital allocation and debt management strategy. Now on to our guidance. We expect fiscal first quarter 2022 revenue to be approximately $310 million, plus or minus $7 million. Operating profit margin is expected to be between 21.5% to 22.5%. And earnings per share to be in the range of 20 cents to 22 cents. we expect NSE revenue to be approximately $215 million, plus or minus $5 million, with operating profit margin at 12.5%, plus or minus 50 basis points. OSP revenue is expected to be approximately $95 million, plus or minus $2 million, with operating profit margin at 43.5%, plus or minus 100 basis points. Our tax expense rate is expected to be approximately 20%. We expect other income and expenses to reflect a net expense of approximately $3.5 million. The estimated fully diluted share count used in our calculation is 244 million shares. This includes an increase of approximately 12 million shares to reflect the estimated dilutive impact from the 2023 and 2024 convertible notes. The share count without the convert dilution is approximately 232 million shares. With that, I will now turn the call over to Col Ouellette.
Thank you, Henk. I'm pleased with VIAVI's performance in our fiscal second half with both Q3 and Q4 achieving record revenue and profitability. The NE segment achieved new revenue highs benefiting from the continued service providers' business recovery and upgrades to the fiber and wireless networks. The demand for 5G wireless equipment reached a record high with strength across all geographic regions. 5G field deployment remains on track for the balance of calendar 2021. The fiber revenues were driven by fiber to the home deployment, 400 gigi network and data center upgrades, and early 800 gigi adoption. NSC bookings came in at record levels, resulting in record backlog and providing us with greater near-term demand visibility. One challenge for our NE segment is the continued shortage of advanced semiconductor devices, dampening our ability to meet an otherwise very strong customer demand. These supply chain constraints have been factored into our fiscal Q1 guidance. Should these supply constraints resolve in near term, we would expect to see some revenue upside in the NE business segment. The SE business segment continues to recover with revenue increasing 17.2% sequentially as we rebuild the customer business funnel. We expect SE to continue to improve as enterprise customers re-evaluate their IT project needs and 5G assurance opportunities start to materialize later in calendar 2022. Now turning to OSP. The OSPI business segment delivered a record June quarter revenue and profitability, led by strong demands for anti-counterfeiting products. Anti-counterfeiting demand continues to be driven by a combination of global fiscal stimulus, inventory replenishment, and bank note redesigns. 3D sensing finished strong in fiscal year 2021, up 18% from last year's levels, driven by broader technology adoption and new applications. Despite strong pandemic-driven headwinds early in the fiscal year, we successfully recovered and managed a very strong finish, hitting multiple financial performance records, including record non-GAAP EPS and cash flow from operations, record OSP fiscal year revenue, non-GAAP gross margins and operating profits, all up double-digit percentages year-on-year, and the record end-year revenue in Q4 driven by strong wireless and fiber demand. As we look ahead into fiscal year 2022, it is off to a strong start with improved NFC demand visibility driven by 5G wireless and new fiber deployment. We expect strong demand for our anti-counterfeiting products to continue driven by global monetary policies and banknote redesigns. In 3G sensing, while we expect a relatively flat demand in fiscal year 2022, we continue to see it as a major growth driver longer term. Overall, we expect our principal growth drivers, 5G, fiber, and 3D sensing to continue driving growth and profitability for VIAVI in fiscal year 2022. In conclusion, I'd like to express my appreciation to the VIAVI team for its continued strong execution in delivering another record quarter and record fiscal year. I wish all our employees, supply chain partners, customers, and our shareholders to remain safe and healthy. I will now turn the call over to Bill.
Thank you, Oleg. This quarter, we'll be participating at the Jeffrey 2021 Semiconductor IT Hardware and Communications Infrastructure Investor Summit on August 31st. Ashley, let's begin the question and answer session. We ask everyone to limit the discussion to one question and one follow-up.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press R1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Your first question comes from the line of Sunny Chatterjee with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Oleg, I think previously you mentioned that between the two drivers being fiber and 5G deployment, you think fiber is the more near-term upside or visibility, and then 5G deployment a bit later. Can you just kind of share your updated thoughts on that? Is that how you're still thinking about it? You mentioned increased visibility for any. What is contributing to that? A bit more color there will help, and I have a follow-up. Thank you.
Sure. Well, I think fiber is still very much the biggest driver, and it's across every segment. It's not only field instruments, but it's also data center. It's lab. It's also fiber applications for the wireless networks because before you can provision 5G or other wireless services, you've got to run the fiber to the tower or the antenna. So fiber continues to be extremely strong, and we are seeing – you know, significant government infrastructure drive in Europe and now also increasingly in North America in getting fiber deeper into the tier two, tier three cities and into the rural customer base. So in that respect, I mean, it's a very, very strong demand. It's far outpacing our ability to supply all the needs that there are out there today due to the severe semiconductor shortage. And as you know, when I say it's improved, we have improved visibility. It means you have a growing backlog that you cannot meet in the short term, so it rolls over into the future quarters, which on one hand, it's the best of times because now you have visibility of a big backlog, but it's also the worst of times because you cannot get all the product that you need when you need it. We continue to manage, but I think, you know, it's fair to say there's a meaningful chunk of revenue that we could have realized in this quarter that we're going to push out into the future quarters. And we're only seeing that trend accelerating and continue to get stronger as various European countries embark on running fiber to practically every home. And we see more and more programs being rolled out and increasing number of requests coming in. So fiber continues to be very strong. That said, we're also starting to see a lot more activity around 5G wireless deployment as plans are starting to come to fruition and major operators starting to move to start doing initial deployment. It's clearly still not as big as we expect it to be within the next six months. It's the early stage, but we're seeing the progress being made in that area as well.
That's great. And Oleg, a second follow-up. If you Can you give us an update on where the process is with Expo related to the different actions you've taken there? What do you think are kind of next steps? And as a side note, like you have been building cash, you're generating quite a substantial amount of cash now on a yearly basis. Outside of Expo, what else is kind of in the thought process or alternatives that you can explore to use the cash that you're generating?
Well, I mean, you know, the cash is not a burning hole in our pockets. I mean, we remain very disciplined. I mean, in the case of Expo, the valuation put forward by the chairman and founder of the company was a no-brainer for us, and we knew full ahead that, you know, fundamentally there is no deal unless Germain Lamont decides to sell. But we felt it was compelling, and necessary for us to put a strong offer on the table to signal the value of the business, because, effectively, it's our business as well, and the bullishness with which we view that environment. And, you know, we'll see tomorrow, I think, is the day when their shareholders get to vote. If they vote to—majority of the minority shareholders vote to decline the offer, then, you know, maybe there'll be further discussions. If they vote to accept it, then they get what they deserve, which is selling their shares subpar. So, I mean, there's really not much more to it. In the end, it's really very much up to the chairman and founder what he wants to do with the company. But we felt we owed it to our shareholders to signal that we're not afraid to be aggressive and put an offer on the table. And there are other targets potentially out there. And, you know, in due time, we'll bring them up to the forefront as well. Okay, great.
Thank you. Thanks for taking my question.
Sure. Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of Alex Henderson with BDM. Your line is open.
Thanks. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the magnitude of the impact from the supply chain challenges to what degree your order rate is above 1.0 and how much of that you might have been able to ship had you had the product and any granularity around which particular products were the most impacted.
so um thank you alex well i mean the order rate in the fourth quarter was significantly um above 1.0 i mean and by significant i mean by a big margin right a big margin that which you know we we always caution people about book to bill ratio because remember a lot of our products are shipped within the same quarter so clearly when you have a very big um book to bill uh index It just basically tells you you have a pretty good start in the first month of the next quarter. And usually, especially in NFC, most of our products, and you in particular, are shipped within three to four months. So it's all kind of shipped. A big chunk of it is book shipped. The shortages that we see, I mean, whereas we're able to pretty much manage most things pretty well, increasingly the area of the most acute shortage is the advanced ICs, in the 14 to 28 nanometer range. So it's really, you know, you can make your own deductions what it is. It's the more complex type ASICs and processor type products that is at the core of our devices. And even though we are fairly good at getting all the other auxiliary parts and be able to put the kits together. That is the area that remains very short. I think we've done a really good call in the fall of last year to load up on the parts. Unfortunately, now that inventory is running pretty low and And, you know, now we are also starting to see some of the shortages. So we continue to manage, but, I mean, it's not a very small number, but it's also obviously not a very big number. But let's put it this way. It will be meaningful enough to drive a significant EPS growth had we been able to meet our demand for this quarter.
If you look at it from the cost side of the equation, how much have you – of your costs are being impacted by expediting and higher air freight, higher container costs and the like that are the side effects of all of this?
Well, I tell you, I think the freight costs are up significantly. The components costs are up. I mean, on these parts that are in extreme shortage, we're seeing brokers charging 30x, and I mean 30x premium on the normal price. So it's a complete... you know, seller's market out there in some of these things, right? So, you know, those are individual isolated devices, but, you know, unfortunately, without that last piece, you cannot build and ship a multi-thousand dollar product. So... That said, we did have some pressure to our gross margins, but fortunately for us, we are in a very kind of high-end product where even higher costs for some devices, expedite fees, logistics fees. We are able to absorb it, and with a higher volume, you know, the better absorption of manufacturing overhead offsets some of the higher costs. At the same time, we are proactively going out there and increasing prices on our products as well. So we're not, you know, we're passing some of those increases to our end customers, and We are being selective about where we are doing it and where we are not. But I can see down the road you're going to see some of the ASP appreciation across the board on all the products. And we are seeing the same. I think our competitors are facing even more severe shortage and higher costs. So that's an opportunity to actually to provide some ASP appreciation.
So can you quantify the impact or no?
um i'm not it's not material it's within a couple percentage points thanks sure your next question comes from john marchetti with spiegel your line is open
Thanks very much. Maybe just following on with that on the supply chain side for a moment, can you just talk about maybe over the last quarter or last several months, how that's trended? Are things relatively stable? Do you still feel like it's getting worse? And kind of where your outlook is, I guess, in terms of how you think this plays out over the next quarter or two?
So, I mean, I think it's a really bimodal distribution. I mean, on the, you know, basic parts, you know, like the discrets, you know, the passives, boards, plastics, I mean, while there is some challenges here and there, it's fairly manageable, and you can handle it with expedites. The area where the situation, I think, is getting worse, and I think the december quarter is going to be probably more acute than even september quarter is i said in that uh kind of high performance 14 to 28 nanometer advanced ics so it's a microcontrollers fpgas asics you name it, because that's kind of the sweet spot for high volume production products that are out there today. Since we don't use anything in a 7 or 5 nanometer range, I'm not privy to shortages there, but I think in the kind of mainstream 14 to 28 is really where we're seeing the biggest shortages. And it's not only silicon. There's also obviously challenges with some of the substrates from what we understand from our vendors.
got it and then just silicon is by far the biggest okay okay and then if i move just to some of the geographic uh commentary in the quarter you know asia pac had a couple of strong quarters here in a row i'm just curious you know if that's skewed towards either the anti-counterfeiting or anything going on there and how maybe we think about you know what's going on i guess from a geographic basis as we're looking out over the next several quarters
Well, it's a combination. I mean, clearly anti-counterfeiting is one thing, but we don't comment on specific countries. But also 5G wireless. I mean, our wireless business has been doing very well in Asia. There's a lot of vendors and operators around 5G. And we're also seeing some – continue to see healthy demand for fiber products.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Your next question comes from Tim Savagell with Northland Capital. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks. Sorry about that. I am going to go back on the supply side a little bit here before asking a higher level question. But, you know, to the extent that you're talking about strong bookings, looks like that's, you know, continuing into the current quarter across the network enablement business, and I guess, you know, across, you know, all three pieces, if you will, fiber, wireless, and cable. You know, should we assume that given that, you know, you have the potential to grow or at least keep any flats sequentially absent any supply constraints? And then I'll follow up.
Yeah, absent of the supply constraints, we probably would have had an all-time record quarter in September. So, I mean, the answer is yes to your question about growth.
Fantastic. And then zooming a little higher level here, you know, last quarter you mentioned the kind of super cycle dynamic underway across your various communications test businesses. It sounds like that continues to develop favorably, but I just wonder if you might provide us with an update on whether any particular piece of that equation has accelerated or changed. in a meaningful way since the last report?
Sure. I mean, that's actually one area that's very exciting for us. So, you know, for the number of years, you know, we've seen very strong growth in Europe, in Asia, even in South and Latin America. And the kind of sick man of the network enablement was always North America with the major players obviously doing everything but network build-out and management. What we have seen in the last, I'd say, six months is a significant and, I mean, really tectonic shift in North America among operators with a lot of the media focus and content going right out of the window and refocusing on the core business in building and operating networks. And, you know, there is a lot of catching up that needs to be done. It's kind of like one of those, if you have a house that you've neglected for years and years, and now all of a sudden you realize that this is really the place you want to live in. And we're seeing significant level of investment pouring in the upgrading capabilities, upgrading networks, rebuilding networks. And that is going to be, in my view, a multi-year trend. And with all the latest, you know, we hear about the infrastructure build-out, I mean, really extending broadband infrastructure to rural area and, you know, pushing fiber all the way to the home, we actually think North America will be a shining star in the coming years. So now we have all three major cylinders are firing now. at full speed, the Europe, Asia, and now finally North America. Just North America reversing trend is actually going to, I think, going to drive our NE segment pretty strongly.
Thanks very much.
Sure.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Genufi with West Park Capital. Your line is open.
Thanks. I wanted to check in on some further segment data on the OSP. So did 3D sensing come in up about 15% year-over-year, I think is about what you were targeting? Is that where it ended up?
That's about right. Yeah. And it's mainly, you know, that's in the absence of anything in Android, which we already talked earlier in the year about.
Okay. So as we think about that, you know, the look ahead, should we also think about that as a, you know, like absence of Android and sort of model it off of flat, just slightly up units with a
as a main customer is that yeah you know we we said we're kind of looking flattish um uh in the air because i mean i think there may be an upside uh if uh some of the android players in the second half uh start deploying 3d printing but uh we we are not factoring that in and uh while we will probably see a higher unit volume but there's also a roadmap pricing that kicks in, so there's some ASP reductions coming in place. So I'd say net-net between the higher unit volume from volume growth and greater penetration of various applications and the ASP reductions, we expect, in the absence of Android, that business to be roughly flat in this fiscal year.
Okay, great. And then I guess for the core OSP, is the sort of low 60s the right way to think about it going forward? Or how do you think about it going forward?
Yeah, I think we said for the foreseeable future it takes $60 million as the kind of base business. You know, remember we used to say $50. Now $60 is the new $50. So that's going to continue, you know, for quite some time in my view.
All right, thanks. I appreciate it. You know, congrats on the strong bookings. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Madam Marshall with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks. You know, first question, obviously AT&T kind of announced earlier in the week a slowdown in some of their fiber bills. And, you know, I know obviously we're talking about a very strong fiber environment and, you know, being sold out of capacity. But just, you know, how should we think about, you know, Is there any kind of lull we would see before some of these broadband plans take off or you feel like kind of the demand environment that we're seeing combined with your ability to supply will leave you in a sold-out position for longer? And then I have a follow-up question.
So AT&T is clearly a very aggressive, has been really, it's like, it's a new religion. Fiber is a new religion within AT&T, and they're moving very aggressively. And, I mean, clearly they are facing a lot of shortages from various suppliers, at least in the interim. But they're by no means the only player. You could pretty much take all the discussions they're having and multiply it for every other fiber supplier. or network operator in North America and in Europe, and they are all looking to do exactly the same thing. So, yeah, I think it will be, I'll say, a capacity-constrained environment for several quarters until the supply chain catches up.
Got it. And then maybe just following up on Mike's question on OSP, you know, clearly you guys have had three drivers over time, you know, increasing kind of monetary volumes, reprints and inventory. And, you know, you noted kind of the first two being the biggest driver. Do we think by the end of this fiscal year, we're even getting back towards an inventory build position or, you know, is this kind of a multi-year kind of this 60 million baseline? Well,
I tell you, when you have very limited capacity, it is very difficult to replenish inventories quickly. So you spread it over a period of time. So I'd say we probably have quite a few quarters of running our lines flat out to just kind of catch up and rebuild all the inventories. And you continue to see increasing demand from various – printers as, you know, various fiscal policies, various countries try to stimulate their economies. You know, and there's still actually quite a few print shops working intermittently because the COVID situation in many of these countries are a lot worse than U.S. So that actually just creates even more latent demand down the road, in my view. But You know, it's by no means just like a straight line. I mean, it's a bit spiky. You can see out of nowhere significant orders and something goes down. But net-net, if you aggregate and average it out over a period of months, it's a very strong upward trend.
Great. Thank you.
Sure.
Your next question comes from Dave Kang with B. Riley. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good afternoon. My first question is regarding the supply chain impact. I think you said 2%. I believe you were talking about revenue impact of 2%. Just wanted to clarify that. And what was the margin impact? Was it like 50 bps or 100 bps? Any color there?
So I did not give you any numbers. I think, I don't know where you heard the 2%. I think when I said 2%, it might have been the impact of higher transportation, logistics, expedite costs. It's maybe 2% impact on gross margin. But at the same time, with higher volumes, we have a greater manufacturer overhead absorption that more or less kind of offset that. But in the absence of all things normal, I mean, we would obviously... have seen higher gross margin on our products and probably higher revenue growth as well.
Got it. And my follow-up is, so you talked about high-end chips that could get worse in December. How should we think about seasonality since December quarter is seasonally strong?
Well, I think the seasonality is no longer the issue. I think it's all about what share of allocation you're going to get. And as you can imagine, I've been dialing for dollars with all the leading vendors to make sure that we get at least our fair share, and hopefully a bit more than that. And my supply chain team has been scouring the earth for a very supply. And the good news for us is we don't need that many units to make a meaningful impact on revenue. I mean, we don't sell low-end consumer parts. I mean, every one of these devices drives thousands, if not tens of thousands of revenue. So in that respect, If you can find several hundred units, it makes a big difference on the margin for us in terms of revenue. Upside.
Got it. Thank you.
Sure.
Your next question comes from the line of Fahad Najam with MKM Partners. Your line is open.
Thank you for taking my question. So I want to kind of needle in on your prepared remark about expecting growth next year. If you can help us a little bit more on that. Look, if I understand in terms of the secular drivers, most prominently the stimulus spending here in North America, the Rural Digital Opportunities Fund, I think the first tranche of the phase one, is this beginning to get released to your end customers? We should be really seeing, you know, RDOF spending coming online, you know, hopefully starting in the fourth quarter of this year, coming towards you guys, suppliers. They've got the infrastructure spending bill that just got passed in the Senate, and then you have the American Rescue Act. All of those funds have yet to come through your way. So it looks like calendar 22 may be a very extraordinary strong growth year for you obviously uh supply chain uh limiting but can you help us put a sense on you know is the supply chain getting worse maybe are we at the uh at the bottom of the supply chain tightness and we expect it to recover from now on and then how does that shape your you know for this rest of the year and i have a couple of follow-ups
So I would say, first of all, I think this quarter is bad in terms of supply tightness. I think December quarter will be worse. And, you know, as they say, hope is eternal. We always hope that at least first half of next year starts getting better, and it's only because we don't think that far or our customers don't even look that far. But I do expect some new capacity coming in line and things starting to rebalance. So I do think sometime first half of next year we should see things improving. In terms of what's driving demand, we're not counting on any of these rural broadband or any of these stimulus things. for driving our current sales. I mean, our current sales are driven just purely by upgrading your existing networks and really playing catch-up, in many cases, especially in North America, to what should have been done in the last five years. So that is just the first tranche. The second driver is Europe. I mean, UK started driving fiber to every home in about a year and a half ago, and it's in the full swing of it. And now we're seeing other countries, like Germany, Italy, France, you know, Netherlands, are following this trade, and that's obviously driving the next level of demand. Now, on top of it, you overlay all these government infrastructure stimulus programs, which I think is, you know, before you see the money for it, probably one or two years, Just as you'll be in a full swing on all these other things, that is going to start kicking in, and then we're going to see that kind of will create the second wave or extend the wave of demand that we're seeing today. That's kind of how we see things playing out.
Okay, I appreciate the answer. I want to follow up on the OSP. If I'm not mistaken, I think I heard you said that 3D sensing was up 18% year over year. Can you remind us if that comp had any Huawei revenue from last year or the ex-Huawei revenue growth?
So that is a net increase, and we did have Huawei in the prior, so it's obviously been zeroed out and all things being cool.
Appreciate the answer. Thank you. Sure.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Bill Ong for closing remarks.
Thank you, Ashley. This concludes our earnings call for today. Thank you, everyone.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.