This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk12: Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the Calix fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call.
spk00: At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the brief prepared remarks. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad.
spk12: As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jim Finucci, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.
spk10: Thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. Today on the call, we have President and CEO Michael Beeney, Chief Financial Officer Corey Sindelar, and Chairman Carl Rousseau. As a reminder, yesterday after the market closed, Calix issued a news release, which was furnished on a form AK along with our stockholder letter, which was also posted in the investor relations section of the Calix website. Today's conference call will be available for webcast replay in the investor relations section of the Cowlitz website. Before I turn the call over to Michael for his opening remarks, I want to remind everyone on this call we will refer to forward-looking statements, including all statements the company will make about its future financial and operating performance, growth strategy, and market outlook, and actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. materially are set forth in the fourth quarter 2022 letter to stockholders and in the annual and quarterly reports filed with the FCC. Calix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements which speak only as of their respective dates. Also in this conference call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in the fourth quarter 2022 letter to stockholders unless otherwise With that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Michael.
spk02: Michael, please go ahead. Thank you, Jim. In the fourth quarter, the CalEx team once again executed with excellence, continuing our track record of improved financial performance across the four measurable objectives that we have outlined for investors. Levert revenue growth, gross market expansion, discipline, operating expense management, and continued predictability. Demand from new broadband entrants, progressive broadband investors, and legacy-minded communication service providers that are transforming from dumb-hug providers to a callous, platform-based broadband service provider was strong in the fourth quarter. The team delivered 39% year-on-year growth in Q4. This closes out an incredible 2022, delivering our third consecutive year of greater than 25% revenue growth. Scouts Connections, our customer success and innovation conference, hosted more than 3,000 attendees coming together in person and virtually. The excitement after Connections was a key contributor to our fourth quarter results as we added 26 new broadband service providers, bringing the 2022 new BSP total to 119. As of fourth quarter, the number of BSPs starting their platform journey with us, increased by 20% year-on-year. We ended the year with 950 BSPs leveraging the revenue edge, the intelligent access edge, or both. In addition, RPOs were $199 million a quarter, up 59% year-on-year and 15% sequentially as more BSPs leveraged callous platforms and managed services
spk09: to transform their business.
spk02: Our platform and managed services bookings were more than 90% of our total bookings in fourth quarter, thereby completing our transformation to a platform company. As our transformation is complete, we will no longer talk about this metric. Instead, we will talk about how our team is enabling DSP customers to transform their business through the power of platform and managed service offerings. Every 91 days, our cadence of innovation delivers new capabilities that help the Calix platform-based DSP succeed. Before I share my thoughts on 2023, I'd like to turn it over to Corey for additional commentary. Corey? Thank you, Michael.
spk10: On the supply front, the TALIS team outperformed again, allowing us to deliver revenue of $245 million at 51.6% gross margin, both slightly above our guidance range. At the same time, we built an incremental inventory of $8 million relative to the third quarter at an inventory turn of 3.0, which remained within our inventory guidance range of 3 to 4. While the supply chain environment is improving in some areas, the challenging areas remain unpredictable and result in surprises. Lead times remain extended, decommits still happen, and sourcing components in the secondary markets require extraordinary effort. We continue to expect the supply chain environment to be challenging through 2023. Balancing our strong demand expectations, With our current view of supply chain performance, we reiterate our target financial model of 10% to 15% revenue growth that we offered during our investor day last February and again last quarter, albeit we expect to be at the high end of this range for 2023. We also reiterate 100 to 200 basis points of gross margin expansion. Furthermore, as we continue to evolve, and our platform and managed services grow, we are making modest changes to our operating expense model. The sales and marketing operating expense range will increase to 18% to 20% of revenue from 17% to 19%. R&D operating expenses will be 29% of gross profit versus 30% of product gross profit. Remember, we are no longer breaking out product and services revenue and gross profit going forward. And G&A operating expenses will decrease to 7% of revenue from 8% of revenue. Calix is leading the disruption occurring in the communication industry, and to address this opportunity, we plan to invest wholesomely to the target financial model. Back to you, Michael. Thanks, Corey. The market is entering a period of inflection.
spk02: The legacy provider is faced with the growing reality that speed as a go-to-market strategy will not succeed in the long term, as most consumers simply do not understand broadband speed. In markets with more than one provider, a speed-only strategy will result in the commoditization of their product, which always starts a price-eroding battle with no path to revenue or subscriber gains. This is the once-in-a-generation opportunity that Calix is uniquely positioned to address. Twelve years and over a billion dollars in investment into our platform and growing portfolio of managed services has enabled Calix to be the company that is uniquely enabling a growing number of broadband service providers to dominate their market and be the legacy provider. We remain committed to our mission. to enable our BSP customers to simplify their business, which consistently delivers new levels of operational efficiency, excite their subscribers through a growing portfolio of managed services, and grow their business, delivering subscriber base expansion, improved profitability, revenue growth, and an ever-growing positive impact on the communities they serve. We thank everyone for their continued interest and support of CalX.
spk12: Let's open the call for questions. Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key.
spk09: One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Ryan Kuntz with Needham & Company.
spk12: Please proceed with your question.
spk07: Hey, good morning. I wonder if you could expand on your impressive surge in RPO you saw in Q4. Is that driven at all much by a change in mix or contract duration across your customer segments? Any kind of color would be helpful.
spk09: Thank you.
spk02: As we said, we had strong demand across our broadband service providers as they continue to adopt our platforms and adopt our managed services. Part and parcel of that is you see a growth in RPOs as we close more contracts.
spk10: Anything else you'd like to add, Corey? Yeah, right. I think it had more to do with the strength of coming off of connections. We also saw some specific around our new product, Marketing Cloud+. But it was not contract duration extensions. It was just increased business activity following the strong attendance coming out of Connections.
spk02: Yeah, I'll just add one piece on that, Ryan, is that, like I said, there were over 3,000 attendees, not just in person when we ran the event in October, but also we ran a very successful virtual Connections two weeks later. So with over 3,000 people attending those different events, there is a huge amount of interest in what we're doing.
spk07: That's great, really helpful. And I wonder if you make any comment at all on kind of the bookings climate out there, you know, in Q4. I know this is seasonally, you know, a softer time for, you know, major, you know, CapEx investments. And there's been some, you know, commentary in the industry around, you know, booking softness as customer lead times. You know, customers don't order product in quite as far a lead. Any comment you can share with us there on that? or the general climate around bookings?
spk02: Thanks, Ryan. As you know, we do not disclose bookings or backlogs. That said, demand for our platform and managed services was strong in the quarter, as you can see by the RPO growth. And our new land and expand chart, which we provided in the investor letter for the first time, gives you good insight into the growth of that land and expand.
spk09: Brian? Still there, Ryan? I am here.
spk12: This is Carl. I want to take the benefit of my gray hair, advanced age, and advantage of the chair position to just share with folks the fact that I've been through these cycles not pandemic-induced multiple times. And I want to highlight what Michael just alluded to and what Corey spoke about at your conference and say that from my perspective, A classic box company, by the way, which Talix 1.0, we remember way back when, was. We experienced in this time higher book-to-bill ratios because of your point, lead times extending out, customers will order further out. Sometimes they'll double order. For example, if you have a distribution channel, you're going to see double ordering. We saw that back in the dot-com bubble and burst in 2002. Those are factors that get people to think we're going to have the same sort of thing. And I suspect you'll hear from vendors, book the bills that are less than one.
spk11: Calix is not Calix 1.0 anymore.
spk12: And what you're seeing is the strength of the platform and managed services and the difference it makes in our demand profile and the team's ability to forecast that demand. And so while I appreciate the question, I will implore you to understand that this is no longer that sort of animal. And so I'll simply amplify on what Michael said and what Corey spoke about at the conference. Demand visibility here is very good, and the demand for the platform and managed services business is strong.
spk09: Fair enough? That's very fair. Thanks, Carl. Appreciate that very much. I'll pass it.
spk12: Thank you. Our next question is from George Nader with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
spk00: Hi, guys. Thanks very much. I was just looking at the shareholder letter, and there's a chart that focuses on platform and managed services adoption. I think you just referred to it, the land and expand slide. So it's great to see all the new customer adoption. But I guess the question I have is, like, when you look at the growth of the software side of the story, going forward, do you think more of it is really predicated on adding new customers or do you think more of it is really about deepening your penetration in existing customers? How do you think about those dynamics?
spk02: Thanks, George. So as we put in that chart, it gives you good indications of the three levels of adoption, right? Starting out with the platforms and the second bar is what we're doing on the clouds. And the third bar is, as we've always stated, the early inception of us going down to managed services. And so, to your question, we actually think about it in all the ways that you identified. On one side of it, we're acquiring new customers. We talked about how, quarter on quarter, we keep adding more new customers. That was 119 in the year, right? Once we're in, they generally start out with our platforms. If they're a new broadband service provider, they're deploying a new network. If they're a brownfield existing service provider, they're maybe doing a new build-out, they're overbuilding their old technology, whether it's old DSL or old cable, right? And then as they start to embrace the transformation of their business from a speed-orientated, dumb type company into an experienced company, then they start rolling out our clouds to transform They're call centers, so they have a great experience and they have a managed service. And their marketing organization and operations, they have automation and ROI, which then leads them to the third stage in their transformation, which is then going beyond speed and offering full managed services. And so my point is, is that it's a stage model that we go through with every customer. Many of them are at different stages in this scenario. So we have huge opportunities in all kinds of places. I'll give you one last example is that if we have an existing competitive account, what a huge opportunity for us to go in and we can start by transforming the marketing organization or we can start by transforming the managed Wi-Fi and the incremental services. So we have a land and expand all over the place.
spk10: Let me just add on to that, George. I look at it in three dimensions. So first dimension is adding customers. Second dimension is adding subscribers. So as they grow their networks and evolve their networks and then adding new applications on top. So to your point and to your question directly, we could stop landing new customers and continue to grow for a very long time. Most of the growth is still going to come out of the additional subscribers that they take and grow their subscriber base.
spk09: And as they add additional platforms,
spk08: Got it. That's helpful.
spk00: And then one other one for you, Corey. I noticed a change in the target model. Can you talk a little bit about why you're making that change right now? Is there something you see that's different about the ultimate profitability of the company or anything you're seeing fundamentally in your business? Is it more just a recognition that you guys have been kind of undershooting relative to some of those targets on the cost side previously?
spk10: Yeah, George, it's more of a function of the evolving business model. Remember, as we started adding additional software to the business mix, we will invest more in the sales and marketing side. So the increase that you're going to get on the sales and marketing side will be offset by higher gross margins. But over time, if you think about a mature software model, Sales and marketing is higher than where it is today. So what you're seeing there is we took up that range to take an effect at a greater software contribution. At the same time, now that we've grown for 25% for the last three years, our G&A model is too high. And you've seen that. We've consistently underrun that by about a percent. So all we're doing is really lowering the G&A model to reflect the realities of where we're at with the size of the business and the synergy that we've achieved, and moving that up to the sales and marketing, reflecting the software contribution.
spk09: Does that make sense, Jordan?
spk08: Got it. Thanks very much, guys. Appreciate it.
spk12: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. Our next question is from Paul Silverstein with Talent and Company. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Thank you. Can you all remind us, relative to the 950 that adopted the platform managed services, the total customer count now is, I think last time you had stated it was 1,700 plus. What's it now?
spk10: You'll see in the 10K that we're approaching 2,000, Paul.
spk03: So it's almost 50% penetration in terms of breadth of data.
spk10: That's the right way to look at it. That's the right way to look at it, Paul. Well, wait.
spk02: It's 50% penetration of one platform or more starting the platform journey. So that means that they could have the intelligent access edge, the revenue edge, or both.
spk03: Correct. Understood. You're anticipating my next question, which is, if I look at the 844 disclosed customers that have adopted one or more clouds, can you give us some sense for, from a depth of penetration standpoint, what was the incremental adoption? For those who had already previously adopted one or two clouds, how many went added a second or third cloud or or the bulk of those 84 already at three clouds yeah the bulk are the bulk of those are not at three clouds um and so but we have we are not providing any further granularity on that fault is it help can you can you give us qualitative insight has there been a healthy progression I assume most customers start with one cloud as opposed to two or three and then progress over time. Any sense for what's been the average? I recognize in one case you just launched this past year, but any sense in what the progression has been qualitatively?
spk02: You're right. They always start with one cloud. The majority of the time they start with one cloud. Then what happens is that depending on the cycle of their deployment and Their transformation, again, so let's say they start out with support cloud. So you're transforming a call center, and if you take a traditional network company, that transformation of a call center is very part and parcel of what you do every day. And then it goes into the next one, which is do you actually understand the need to transform away from a speed-based go-to-market model? And then you're going to go after the marketing cloud. Or you're looking for operational efficiencies and you're going to deploy operations cloud because it drives massive reductions in objects. So it really just depends. So qualitatively, you're right, it depends on the length of the deployment before they go to the site. And then third.
spk12: And Paul, this is Carl. I'm frankly amazed that you weren't simply overwhelmed by the addition of this new metric and didn't have literally the oxygen snatched from your lungs with the all of this chart?
spk03: That's the oxygen from my lungs, Carl. If Ryan already asked this, my apologies. I don't think he did. But from a macro perspective, of course, the investment community understandably worries about the current climate, the increase in interest rates, macro environment. I know you get asked this at least once every 90 days, if not more often, but any sign of a pullback in BSP deployments, projects, delays, project cutbacks, whether due to interest rates or the ongoing labor constraints? And on the latter, are you seeing any improvement? Given what's going on in the economy with layoffs, et cetera, are you seeing any improvement in labor constraints? that in turn translates to more confidence in these projects going forward?
spk12: Yeah, it's a good question, Paul. And I think what's very interesting about interest rates as they have moved and the general economy is it actually highlights the differences in the market and the disruption. But rather than me answer that, Michael obviously has relationships with many, many of the leaders in our segment and I think can speak more eloquently to it.
spk02: Yeah, so, Paul, interest rates create an opportunity cost bar. You know, if you're running a low ROI business, the opportunity cost bar is above your business case, so you stop investing. If you have a high ROI business model and the bar is lower, well, you'll continue to invest, even when interest rates go up. So now apply that to a service provider. A legacy provider who uses terms like homeless pass and only competes on speed and price, they're really just an infrastructure player. Where the Calix BSD uses subscribers served and net promoter score, which enable them to drive a dramatically higher ROI. So when these interest rates happen, it is irrelevant because their ROI is way over the bar. So that's kind of how we're seeing the market.
spk12: And on the recession side that Paul asked about from a jobs, labor, potentially layoffs or whatever, what are you seeing there from our customers?
spk02: Well, so with regards to the recession at this point actually job ads are still strong so if you look back if i you know correct me if i'm wrong corey but in december job ads in the united states were 230 000 i think they were the month before job ads were 261 000 so while we hear this general noise in the market for people who follow tech it's actually a completely opposite scenario across the united states when i can still go into a chipotle and get You know, I see the signs of hiring, hiring, hiring, and they're offering $22 to $25 an hour. That doesn't really translate into labor markets spraying up in the rural market at all. So for our customers, is labor still a constraint? Yes, and I was just at a conference with a bunch of CEOs, and they all said the same thing. They said labor remains a constraint.
spk03: All right, before I pass it on, just to clarify your previous comment about carrier activity, deployment activity, I've heard you make the comment before I understand your point about your higher ROI and therefore being less of a challenge. But if I could just ask you this simple question, independent of that fact, are you seeing any pullback, any delays by carriers in project deployments?
spk02: In Calix broadband service providers? No.
spk09: Okay. I'll pass it on. I appreciate it. Thank you.
spk12: Thank you. Our next question is from Michael Genevieve with Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed with your question. Great. Thanks. I guess I want to talk about the supply chain and some of the comments made at the conference a couple weeks ago that there were, you know, decommits in the quarter. I think if you hadn't said it at the conference, we wouldn't have noticed it in the results. So could you talk a little bit more about this quarter's decommits versus last quarter's decommits, the kind of changes in the environment and the supply chain, and then what you expect going forward for the next few quarters?
spk09: Yeah, thanks, Mike.
spk10: Over the last two, three years, it's been a challenging supply environment. We've had decommits and schedule outs all the time. So it's a continuation of the same that we've been experiencing. And what you've seen us this quarter do again, continue to execute with excellence, and our supply chain has met those challenges and rose above them. So I think I've said that we think the worst is behind us. Last quarter we talked about the supply chain bottoming and improving. So we expect that the supply chain will continue to improve, yet it remains challenging in certain regards. And so those things we'll continue to work through. But if I were to go year over year, it's a better supply environment than it was a year ago.
spk12: And I guess just my question, a follow-up to that is, so if it's better than it was a year ago, I mean, do you expect the improvement in 23 to be sort of smooth sequentially with improvement as you move through the year? Or are you braced for, you know, potential lumping back and forth throughout the year and that a later quarter could be tougher than an earlier quarter, if that question makes sense?
spk10: Well, that's the interesting thing about a challenging supply environment. There's surprises. So I can't tell you what's gonna happen in the future. But I can tell you that if you look back a year ago, we were only forecasting revenue growth of five to 10%. We're sitting here today saying we're gonna grow at 15%. You're seeing that we've built inventory up year over year. We're sitting here at a terms ratio of three. So we feel a lot better about where we are today, but yet you have to understand it's still a very challenging supply environment. and surprises do happen, and we will continue to manage through it like we have in the past.
spk12: Perfect. Last question for me, because I feel like I always have to kind of ask you guys a question just about, you know, level of disclosure and what kind of new stuff we can get. And you obviously gave us new disclosure on the platform and managed services. customer count over the last five quarters. And I guess my question is that if you're disclosing that customer count, it's not too far away from just telling us the revenue breakout. What are your thoughts on that? If you're not trying to give away too much, but it's not that far of a step from just telling us more of a revenue segmentation of the company. Can I just get your thoughts on that? Mike, let me take this real quickly. It's Carl. I'm excited by the change in leadership at Calix with Michael and Corey leading the show. I'm excited that they chose to share this new graph, but I'm still in the room. And so to be clear, you're right, directionally, you're getting closer. But remember, competition still is something that I have no personal interest in encouraging. And so I think the combination of RPOs combined with customer land and expand penetration gives those investors who have been following us an even better sense for the power of the model and probably hate them modeling the business. Subscriber counts, ARRs, things of that nature, are way off in our future. So I think you now have the new chart. We'll be speaking to it more as we go forward. But I'm excited that Michael and Corey chose to show it.
spk11: And I think we would best stand pat on that. Fair enough?
spk12: Yes, absolutely. Thanks a lot.
spk09: Appreciate the questions and nice execution. Thanks.
spk12: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. Our next question is from Greg Mezunia with West Park Capital. Please proceed with your question.
spk05: Yes, thank you. Question on sales and marketing levels. You've partially addressed my question with raising the guidance on that. I did notice that your Tier 2 customer breakdown was up most significantly in your letter. How does that correlate with the increase in sales and marketing? In other words, is that because you are Targeting the Tier 2 is a lot more now, and that's requiring higher sales and marketing resources. Thanks.
spk02: No. Actually, it has no correlation with sales and marketing. It's actually just focused on what we're doing with regards to platforms and software. That's what's attracting them, but that doesn't require incremental in a Tier 2 at all. So there's no correlation.
spk05: Gotcha. That's all I have right now. Thanks.
spk12: Thanks, Greg. Thank you. Our next question is from with Loop Capital. Please proceed with your question.
spk01: Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I want to go back to the supply chain comments. If I look at the level of beat you had in Q3 versus the level of beat versus consensus you had in Q4, that is, you know, it's narrowing, yet your commentary about supply chain improving. So I'm trying to maybe understand, are you still like having, you know, golden parts missing and that impacted the quarter? Just if you can elaborate a little bit more on that.
spk10: Yeah, sure. So I think we were clear in the stopover letter last quarter that last quarter's revenue was more of the anomaly, right? We had a certain amount of our inventory lineup that allowed us to overperform in the quarter. I think we also said that that was more of an exception at that time. And what you should expect from us is to have narrower differences between what we actually execute to and the guidance we've performed. So that's what you've seen in the fourth quarter. We did what we thought we would do, and now it wasn't anything related to golden screws or anything along that line. We just continued to work the problem and made steady progress on the quarter.
spk01: Got it. If I revisit your new disclosure, can you give us a sense? I know you mentioned that there's three dimensions to your opportunity. One is the number of service providers, but then the other is subscribers that they serve and how many subscribers they have enrolled onto your platform. Can you give us a sense on what percentage of your, or maybe directionally give us some helpful hints on how we should be thinking about the subscriber penetration within your broadband service providers that you have disclosed, those who have adopted the cloud versus those who are, you know, just adopting one portion of your cloud service?
spk02: Yeah. So as we've stated frequently, it's early days, right? So when you think about the penetration on the suites, you know, we've demonstrated in there, if you look at the number, there's 293 who have deployed one or more suites into their subscribers. But that also, they have different go-to-market models with regards to, are they driving as an upsell? Are they including this embedded into their platform? There's all kinds of different ways to look at this. So I would say because it's early days, there is no additional insight other than they have at least one. It's against a portion of their subscriber base, and there's lots of upside. As we've mentioned in the letter, there's currently seven managed services that are available for them to deploy, and we've announced another four on top of that. So lots of opportunity ahead, but it's still early days.
spk09: I appreciate the answers. Thank you.
spk12: As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from Tim Savage with Northland Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
spk06: Hi. Good morning. My question is about kind of growth metrics, I guess, at a high level. And you've given us some new ones here with the – platform adoption kind of indicators, and at least if you take the big ones, those appear to be growing kind of in the 15, 20% range in terms of platform adoption. Of course, as you mentioned, you've got customer additions on top of that. And I want to contrast that with the RPO growth rate in the 60% range, 15% sequential. So as we look at those two metrics... I guess, which one would you say is more important in terms of speaking to the overall future growth rate of the company? And, you know, how do you reconcile the delta to those two? And, you know, where do we end up? And, you know, and also relative to your overall 10% to 15% growth rate. Looks pretty conservative relative to those metrics. I'll leave it there.
spk02: Okay, thank you, Kim. Complex question. I would say that Corey mentioned that we were in the range of 10 to 15% now confident and said, you know, we're at the top of that range as we look into 2023. So I think that's a pretty clear indicator. With regards to future opportunity, that's why I stated in my opening remarks that we're at this inflection point in the industry where we have all these service providers who are legacy-minded, who have been really focused on one go-to-market, which is speed, and they're realizing really quickly that that's a coffin corner in the future because of the fact that it leads to the commoditization of their product, and they need to differentiate. And so they're looking to us. And as you can see, there's a small number of the potential base, which is up to 2,000 service providers who have deployed at only one or more managed services. Right? So there's that 293 that have one or more. So I would say what's the future growth rate? We're just at the beginning of what's possible.
spk09: That's the best way to state it. Great. Thanks very much. Thank you. Our next question is from George Nader with Jeffery.
spk00: Please specific your question. Hi, guys. Thanks a lot for letting me follow up here. I guess I wanted to ask about the tax rate. So you guys changed the long term model a bit on tax rate. I also noticed that your deferred tax assets are not going down. If I look at DTAs relative to some prior quarters, can you talk about, you know, sort of the picture on taxes going forward?
spk10: Sure, George, happy to do that. I can't believe I'm doing it this early, but go ahead. Yeah, so we continue to generate some DTAs through R&D tax credits and stock compensation that keeps on adding back to it. But what you saw in the quarter was a benefit that was realized in the fourth quarter, and that had largely to do with some of those deferred tax assets that I talked about. As far as the rate going forward, a couple of things are happening. Obviously, our level of income is going up, and the way some of that, and I think I referred to this before, but the GILTI in peace was based on foreign operations, and that's relatively fixed relative to our growth rate. So you should expect that to come down, and that's what you've seen. You've seen us bring down the effective rate by 8% relative to last year.
spk09: Thank you very much.
spk00: And then also, you mentioned foreign operations. Obviously, the company is still very North American-centric. Can you talk about your opportunity with the cloud platforms products looking into the UK or Europe or other parts of the world? Are you starting to invest there more aggressively? And what's the catalyst for getting that side of the business growing?
spk10: Yeah, George, let me just clarify. When I said foreign operations, it was really our offshore development teams in China and India. But I'll turn it over to Michael to talk about what we're looking to do on the revenue side for international expansion.
spk02: Yeah, George, we've been really clear that the focus on North America, because there's such a significant opportunity ahead, while we are – running a limited expansion in the international market, primarily in the United Kingdom, we are making it limited. And the reason why is that until we have reached our full opportunity in North America, it would be foolhardy of us to go into other markets where there's so much opportunity. And you're going to see that from us consistently for the foreseeable future.
spk09: Thanks, guys. Thank you. Our next question is from Paul Silverstein with Cowen & Company.
spk12: Please proceed with your question.
spk03: I appreciate it. To go back to Tim's question and Michael's response, I appreciate that subsidy disbursements are always slower than a lot of us would like and you folks would like, and I appreciate that the supply chain is still challenging, and I appreciate that there are risks to CapEx pullbacks. Although you guys have said again and again with your return on investment that you enable, that risk is not as prominent as a lot of us perceive. So all that said, and I should add, I'm sure the investment community appreciates you all having been pretty conservative historically. But all that being said, is there anything wrong with the logic that supply chain directionally will improve? Fund disbursements will increase. over time there will be overlap, and all other things being equal, and your clouds will progress in breadth of adoption, depth of adoption, as well as the software-based applications. Shouldn't all that translate into revenue acceleration over time?
spk09: In the future, yes. Maybe.
spk02: You know, the point is that Corey came out with confidence and said, if you look back on, you know, let's step back a year or two years ago, we were saying five to 10. Now we're at 10 to 15. And Corey was pretty clear in his commentary that he sees 15%. And so I think the key thing for us is that we look into 2023 and we're going to cross an incredible milestone. We're going to be right at a billion dollars organically. And the reason why we're doing that and accomplishing that as a leadership team and as an organization is because we're sticking to the tenets that we've intimated over and over again to be excellent at execution. We're focused on those four things, deliberate revenue growth, gross margin expansion, discipline, operating expense management, where we're investing fulsomely to ensure we capture all the opportunities, and then most important or as important, continued predictability. So what we're giving you, Paul, is that continued predictability by executing against all those things.
spk09: So in the future, maybe, but this is what we feel confident as a leadership team.
spk03: But, Michael, just to be clear, if fund disbursement, subsidy disbursement did accelerate, if supply chain does improve meaningfully, all those things being equal, unless there's some other factor, that would present upsize at 15% or that's embedded in the 15%?
spk02: We feel comfortable at 15%. And that's with all the different variables affiliated with it. If that's what we actually do when we determine what is the growth rate that we feel is a predictable one for our investors. And so we take all those different inputs if this was faster, if this was slower, if that was faster, to come up with our recommendation and our prediction for 2023. And our prediction for 2023, you heard Corey speak in a way that he hasn't spoken before. Actually, he would always talk in broad ranges, 10 to 15. He said, I see 15. So that should be an indicator of conflict.
spk12: Yeah, I think your predicate, Carl, you know, if and if, I mean, it's sort of like a mathematical proof. If you take assumptions and make ifs, as we've said, we think this is a huge generational opportunity. You know, if I think back, if I was handsomer, never mind. Well, I was thinking about it, and then I was thinking, it's not possible.
spk02: No, but could you expand on one thing, though? That you've been through multiple, for example, government funding, say, you know, right?
spk12: So give me your experience. Give me the experience. Michael's looking over here and seeing a lot of gray hair. All of this, and Paul, you actually, I know you have some gray hair on this, too, because you remember broadband stimulus in 2009. And the challenges are, I agree with the ifs. The problem is predicting the ifs. So the goal here with the team is to execute in the planning horizon, knowing that this is a big opportunity But predicting is just too hard.
spk03: I appreciate that. I'm not debating that. I appreciate the conservatism. But to me, it seems like it's stating the obvious. It's really not saying all that much to say that if there's acceleration in disbursements, if there's a meaningful improvement in constraints, labor, and components, that that should translate to acceleration for all, not just for you, but for the whole industry. I can't speak to what's so terrible about the logic.
spk12: Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold on a second. It's not a matter of the whole industry. I can't speak to the whole industry. It's not a matter of the way you are conjugating, in essence, the theorem, which is if that happens, I agree. The challenge is it's not conservative. It's actually realism. I've been through this before. You've been through this before. And it's not being conservative. These programs simply don't happen that way. They never do. And standing in front of them, predicting them, you're just better off waiting until you start to see the demand, the actual orders, and then getting through to the point of revenue. And then you've got to get to deployments through a labor constraint or other issues. So there are so many steps in that sequence that if you simply go to the end and say yes, yeah, sure. But it's not being conservative.
spk11: It's literally being realistic.
spk09: I appreciate the distinction. Understood. Okay. Thank you. Our next question is from Bahad Majan with Luke Capital.
spk12: Please continue with your question.
spk01: Hey, thank you for getting back to me. So follow up on your previous discussion. Can you give us a sense on where your or how much of your revenue base is currently coming from RDOF What's your expectations for this year from stimulus funding? And then I have a follow-up.
spk09: Sure, I'll take that.
spk10: So today, I think we've been pretty consistent with what we've told folks. There is some money coming through, but understand that that program has had challenges with it. We did start seeing some of the money roll out last year. That money comes over a 10-year time frame. So it's just a small amount of revenue that we are seeing today, but there's a lot more in front of it, you know, to come.
spk01: Correct me if I'm mistaken, but historically, I think your previous outlook has been like 10 to 12% of the funds end up in the common equipment supplier base. Is that still true? Yes. Okay. So my long-term question to you is clearly your model has evolved to a point where it is almost getting close to, if I look a little bit around the corner, that you're almost tracking to a rule of 40 model that most software peers are tracking. Why not begin to convey a rule of 40 framework as opposed to the current framework that you're still using, which is more consistent with box and ship type of companies?
spk12: Baha, that's a much longer conversation on the rule of 40 and the reality of it or not. I'll take that one offline because I have a whole different set of beliefs from looking at the market and the rule of 40, et cetera. So rather than bore everybody with that here, on another one of my pedantic lectures, I'll take that one offline with you.
spk01: All right. Appreciate it. Looking forward to it.
spk11: Thank you for that compliment.
spk12: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Jim Finucchi for any closing comments.
spk10: Thank you, Paul. Calix leadership will participate in several investor events during the first quarter of 2023, and information about these events, including dates and times for public webcasts of management presentations when available, will be posted on the events presentation page of the investor relations section of calyx.com. Once again, thank you to everyone on this call and webcast for your interest in Calyx and for joining us today.
spk09: This concludes our conference call. Have a good day. Goodbye. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
Disclaimer