Ciena Corp (CIEN) 2006 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Ciena Corporation fourth quarter 2006 results conference call.

Today's call is being recorded.

At this time, for opening remarks and introductions I'd like to turn the call over to the Senior Manager of Investor Relations, Ms. Jessica Towns.

Please go ahead.

Thanks, Felicia.

Good morning and welcome, everyone.

I'm pleased to have with me Gary Smith, Ciena's CEO and President and Jim Chinnici, our CFO.

In addition, Steve Alexander, our Chief Technology Officer, will be with us for the Q&A portion of today's call.

On our call this morning we'll present in four segments.

Gary will provide some brief introductory comments, Joe will review the financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year, Gary will then discuss the business in more detail and our view for fiscal 2007, Joe will wrap up our prepared remarks with guidance.

Then we'll open the call to questions from sell-side analysts.

To insure we answer questions from as many participants as possible we ask that the sell-siders limit themselves to one question.

This morning's press release is available on National Business Wire and First Call and also on Ciena's Web site at ciena.com.

Before I turn the call over to Gary, I'll remind you that during this call we'll be making some forward-looking statements.

Such statements are based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions of the Company that include risks and uncertainties that the can cause actual results to differ materially from the statements discussed today.

These statements should be viewed in the context of the risk factors detailed in our 10-Q filed with the SEC on August 31st.

The results we are discussing today are unaudited results.

We continue to work through the process of our year-end audit and completing the 10-K.

Given our desire to be as forthcoming and timely as possible with our disclosure, we made the decision to present today's unaudited results to you.

We have until January 11th to file our 10-K.

We expect to do so by then or before.

Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information discussed in this conference call, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

Gary?

Thanks, Jessica, and good morning, everyone.

We're pleased to deliver fourth quarter results that mark our return to profitability as well as our 11th sequential quarter of revenue growth.

These results illustrate our continued measurable progress which is directly attributable to the sustained execution of our strategy and focus on driving operating performance improvements.

Looking ahead, we are confident that we will continue to benefit from leveraging our specialist role in transitioning networks in markets that continue to expand and improve, particularly in high growth areas like Ethernet.

I'll discuss our business for the fourth quarter and for fiscal year 2006 in more detail as well as our outlook following Joe's review, once Joe's reviewed the quarter results.

Joe?

Thanks, Gary.

Good morning, everyone.

As Jessica mentioned, I'd ask you to remember that the results I'm about to discuss are unaudited results.

This morning we recorded fourth quarter revenue totaling $160 million.

This represents an increase of 4.9% sequentially and 35.3% year-over-year.

Our fiscal 2006 annual revenue totaled $564.1 million, an increase of 32% over our fiscal 2005 revenue.

There were two 10% plus customers in the fourth quarter that represented 38.1% of total sales.

One customer is North American and is purchasing primary long-haul capacity additions.

This customer also represented more than 10% of revenue in the third quarter of FY '06.

The second 10% customer is international and is purchasing primarily long-haul haul and 4200.

This customer has not been 10% or more of quarterly revenue since early 2004.

For the year we had three 10% plus customers representing 40.2% of total sales.

They were Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T.

International sales increased sequentially representing 31.7% of total revenue in the fourth quarter as compared to 23.7% in the third quarter.

For the year international sales represented 24.9% of total sales.

Moving now to talk about quarterly revenue contribution across our portfolio.

Revenue from our optical networking products increased sequentially from $102.3 million in the third quarter to $118.9 million in the fourth quarter representing 74% of the quarter's total revenue.

Our optical networking products consist of core transport and switching, metro transport and switching and multi service optical access products.

Long-haul core transport related revenue grew slightly from $52.1 million in Q3 to $54.7 million in Q4 and was the largest contributor within optical networking products.

Core switching related revenue grew sequentially from $17.9 million in Q3 to $22.5 million in Q4.

Revenue from our metro transport and switching products grew from $26 million in Q3 to $35.7 million in Q4.

Included in the revenue from our metro transport and switching products were sales of our CN 4200 FlexSelect advanced services platform which increased significantly from $11.5 million in Q3 to $22.7 million in Q4.

Revenue from our multi service optical access products was relatively flat at $6 million.

[In the] networking product revenue decreased from $12.8 million in Q3 to $5.1 million in Q4.

Revenue from our broadband access products decreased from $20.7 million in Q3 to $13.7 million in Q4.

Network and service management software product revenue increased from $2 million in Q3 to $3.7 million in Q4.

And lastly, revenue from our global networking service business increased quarter-to-quarter from $14.7 million in Q3 to $18.5 million in Q4.

We provide this revenue break down in an effort to give you a more detailed basis for comparison.

However, as features and functionalities converge on our platforms, the lines between our products are blurry making these historical groupings less relevant in assessing the underlying market trends and the effect they are having on our business.

Going forward we may adjust our commentary [inaudible] regarding product revenue to provide more meaningful data and better reflect the growing significance of application specific scenarios and other factors as they relate to our financial performance.

Turning now to gross margin.

As expected, Q4's gross margin of 45.5% decrease from Q3's 47% primarily as a result of the shift to lower margin products and the mix of total revenue in the quarter.

Product gross margin was 47.7% in Q4, a decrease from 48.9% in Q3.

Q4 services gross margin was 28.4%, a decrease from 28.7 in Q3.

In the remainder of my comments today I'll speak to both the GAAP results and to what the results would have been if we excluded those items detailed in the press release.

On a GAAP basis our operating expenses in the fourth quarter totaled $68.9 million.

Adjusted for non-operating or non-recurring charges detailed in the press release, our R&D, sales and marketing, and G&A expenses for the fourth quarter would have been $60.4 million.

This is slightly up as expected from Q3's $59.2 million as adjusted op ex primarily due to increased sales and marketing costs.

Our fourth quarter GAAP net income of $13.1 million, or $0.14 per diluted share compares to a GAAP net loss of $252.9 million, or a loss of $3.06 per share in same year ago period.

In fiscal 2005 GAAP results do not include the impact of FAS 123R but do include share-based compensation expense recognized in accordance with ABP 25 as interpreted by FASB Interpretation No. 44.

Adjusted for the unusual or non-operating items detailed in our press release, including 123R related compensation expense, our fourth quarter net income would have been $22.4 million, or $14.6 million if tax effected, or as adjusted net income of $0.16 per share.

This is better than the per share guidance range we offered and compares to an as adjusted loss of $0.14 per share in the same period a year ago.

Now turning to the balance sheet.

Cash, short-term and long-term investments at the end of the fourth quarter totaled $1.2 billion.

We used $15 million in cash for operations in the fiscal fourth quarter.

This includes $10.2 million of semi-annual interest payments on the Company's outstanding 3.75% convertible notes.

Turning to some of the other balance sheet items.

As expected, our accounts receivable balance at the end of the quarter increased from $89.3 million at the end of Q3 to $107.2 million in Q4, primarily as a result of our increased international business.

Days sales outstanding in Q4 was 60, below our expected range of 65 to 70 days.

On the inventory front, as expected inventory levels ended the fourth quarter at $106.1 million, up from Q3's $95.8 million as a result of purchases made to support anticipated demand.

The inventory break down for the quarter was as follows: Raw materials, $29.6 million, work in process, $9.2 million, finished goods, $89.6 million, and a reserve for excess obsolescence of $22.3 million.

The largest increase came in the area of finished goods which is up 10% from Q3.

As expected, product inventory turns were 2.8 down slightly from 2.9 in Q3 given the increase in inventory.

Finally, headcount.

Our worldwide headcount at the end of the fourth quarter totaled 1,485, an increase of 63 from the third quarter, largely reflecting the ramp of our R&D facility in India.

And now I'll turn the call back over to Gary.

Thanks, Joe.

As I said earlier, our Q4 results marks Ciena's return to profitability, both for the fourth quarter as well as for fiscal year 2006.

We're excited by the achievement of this goal as another marker of our progress, and we attribute it to the focused consistent execution of our strategy.

Our team has long included some of the very best people in the industry.

Their sustained commitment to the Company and tireless execution of the corporate strategy have been the difference between Ciena being just a survivor and Ciena being very well positioned for long-term future growth.

We will now apply that energy and commitment which enabled us to get back to this point to build on this success and continue improving our financial performance.

Last year at this time, we said we were beginning to see signs of improving overall market strength and that our network specialist strategy positioned us to take advantage of that and I think that has happened.

Specifically, we said Ciena would achieve profitability on an as adjusted basis during a quarter prior to the end of fiscal 2006.

We did that in the second quarter and, in fact, have done even better reaching GAAP profitability in the fourth quarter at a level high enough to achieve profitability for the full-year.

We said we'd take steps to improve gross margin and reduce our operating expenses, we've done those things as well And we said we expected our specialist position to enable us to continue to grow faster than the market.

We've done that in 2006 and have been doing so consistently for nearly two years.

Above and beyond that, we've successfully established the conditions for Ciena to continue to take advantage of improving market conditions, particularly with our FlexSelect architecture and advanced portfolio, which provide a highly effective solution for transitioning customers to Ethernet-centric converged networks.

As a result, Ciena is now operating from a position of renewed strength.

At a macro level, there is growing strength in our addressable market.

In addition to success based spending for network upgrades to meet growing capacity needs, we're seeing acceleration in the adoption of practical network transition strategies to enhance service delivery, improve business models, and increase competitive advantage.

Demand for next generation technologies continues to rise as the need intensifies for our customers to support a growing number of advanced services and applications.

That market environment is being driven by several new sources of demand on networks, including a wave of infrastructure extension, largely driven by global mobility and access as well as a growing volume of bandwidth intensive services like video and storage, and acceleration of both wireline and wireless broadband deployments on a global basis.

These demands are most visible with traditional telco service providers who own and operate the fundamental voice networks that were not designed to support more advanced services and who are challenged by significant legacy network investment.

In response, service providers are beginning to reprioritize their investments and reset their business goals to increase their probability of success.

To some degree, and particularly in the U.S., this is leading the service provider consolidation, which in turn is forcing the integration of long-haul and local networks.

At the same time, core infrastructure upgrades are a necessity to support ongoing bandwidth demands and reduce op ex costs on legacy networks.

Additionally, these service providers are focused on capturing broadband customers, in part to prevent subscriber loss as well as to enable up sell for triple play services.

For enterprise customers they are making broadband upgrades a priority led by a transition to Ethernet.

And for those service providers with a role in wireless, they are also focused on wireless infrastructure upgrades to support 3G, IMS, and overall wireline convergence.

However, as we've said previously, we're also seeing our other customer segments including cable, government, and enterprise, implement transition strategies to better support the full spectrum of communication services.

And as a result of network and service convergence, the lines between traditional telco and these other customer segments are blurring which means growth opportunities for Ciena.

We continue to find that these non-traditional buyers are becoming increasingly important and meaningful drivers of market growth.

For example, we've had several recent strategic wins in the government space particularly with research and education network including Internet2's next generation build and we continue to see interest from specific enterprise verticals, securing several wins with our carrier partners for these networks.

We also see evidence of Ciena's strengthening position in the marketplace with indications every day that our technology is enabling these positive customer and market trends.

And as I mentioned, end user dynamics are creating new implications for carrier and enterprise networks, fueling the need to transition networks to more efficient and flexible models.

We believe this transition is in its infancy and all indications are that the move to converged architectures will be underway for some time.

Ciena is strongly positioned to benefit from this trend over the long-term with a sustained commitment to innovation and a distinct approach and implementation of network transition.

Our FlexSelect architecture is uniquely designed to enable the transition from legacy transport to Ethernet centric converged architectures.

We provide flexibility via software enabled network and embrace Ethernet as the underpinning transport technology and common delivery vehicle for all services.

Leveraging well established procedures and industry standards, FlexSelect also helps customers control op ex to a point that it increases at only a fraction of the pace of revenue growth.

Those economics, combined with the flexibility of our approach, provides our customers a faster, more cost effective path to market with new services and offers them the freedom to dynamically make changes to the network without negatively impacting the user.

All of these network characteristics are desirable to both Ciena's traditional telco customers and also the new buyers in our market who demand better network economics and flexibility.

In short, FlexSelect provides our customers substantial peace of mind and investment protection.

It also enables them to transition their networks to scale IP Ethernet service revenue at their own pace.

This value of FlexSelect is stimulating many of our recent customer successes, and is the key driver behind the continued momentum for our CN 4200 FlexSelect advanced services platform.

We've already begun extending the strength of this technology and innovation across our portfolio and we'll continue to take our specialization in network transition to the next level.

Lastly, I think we're benefiting from the steadily improving strength of our overall financial position.

We continue to report growing sales.

We've steadied our gross margins and we've made significant progress in the management of our operating expenses.

We've said many times that our strategy is not without its risks.

We deliberately chose not to cost cut our way back to profitability.

Instead we chose a strategy to grow our way there through investments in our technology and our commitment to manage that growth as efficiently as we could.

I believe we've done that and achieving profitability is an important milestone for us in the execution of that strategy.

It is a clear example of our traction in the market as we continue solidifying our technology leadership position and improving our business model.

However, our work is not done.

And even from our position of renewed strength, we continue to acknowledge the fine line between feeding the growth in our business and continuing to gain incremental efficiencies to make Ciena more globally competitive.

We also remain committed to prioritizing our forward investments focusing our dollars on the opportunities where we're confident in our ability to execute successfully and insuring we fully optimize every dollar spent.

A good example of the combination of some of these efforts is the progress we've made in raising our R&D capacity.

Leveraging the efficiencies we put in place, particularly through the ongoing growth of our India facility, we've been able to continue our accelerated pace of innovation with minimal incremental costs.

In summary, our fiscal fourth quarter marks an important inflection point for our business, putting us in a position of renewed strength.

We see increasing opportunities to help customers align their network architectures with the business values of their customers.

At the same time, our market continues to change quickly and we're keenly aware of the importance in staying nimble and innovative to maintain momentum and continue driving growth.

We have the constituent parts, a strong technology pallet and a record of proven experience to enable our customers to seamlessly and efficiently adapt their networks to meet the new era of demand.

The essence of our FlexSelect architecture is to facilitate the transition to Ethernet-centric converged infrastructures that support these demands and our results today, I believe, are indicative of the momentum we're building with customers for this specialty.

Meeting the objectives we set in 2006 allows us to go on the offensive in 2007 and further leverage our technology leadership in an increasingly receptive market.

To do this, we will remain focused on the execution of our strategy and believe that in 2007 we can continue growing faster than the overall market and improving our overall financial performance.

For the first time in several years the momentum we have in our business model and with customers, combined with encouraging market dynamics, is affording us greater foresight and additional opportunities to capitalize on the available market opportunity.

With those comments, I'd like to pass it over to Joe who will walk us through the guidance.

Thank you.

Thanks, Gary.

Before I begin to offer guidance, I will remind everyone that the statements Gary just made and those that I'm about to make are forward-looking.

It is important to review the risk factors detailed in our most recent 10-Q in order to understand the factors that might cause actual results to differ materially from this guidance.

In addition, the guidance I'm about to discuss is on a GAAP basis.

At the end of the guidance I will also share with you as adjusted EPS.

As stated in the press release, we expect to deliver on a percentage basis low single-digit sequential revenue growth in our fiscal first quarter 2007.

Gross margin, as we have said in the past, is difficult for us to predict with accuracy and we expect will continue to fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter.

It ultimately depends on a combination of factors, the primary one being product and customer mix, but can also be influenced by volume, pricing, and the effects of our ongoing product cost reductions.

That said, we expect gross margin will remain in the mid 40s for the first quarter.

We expect our GAAP operating expenses in Q1 will increase moderately from Q4 primarily reflecting continued investment in R&D, including the ramping of our India facility as well as prototyping component costs.

We expect other income expense for the first quarter will be income of approximately $9 million.

On our tax rate, as we have previously discussed, we are not likely to pay significant U.S. federal taxes for some time on our GAAP profit, given our sizeable NOL position.

Accordingly, our quarterly income tax expense should represent primarily foreign taxes, which we expect in the first quarter will be approximately $400,000.

We estimate Q1 diluted share count at approximately 94 million total shares.

As a result, we expect that our GAAP net income for Q1 will be in the range of $0.09 to $0.14 per diluted share.

I'm now going to discuss EPS on an as adjusted basis.

As we said last quarter, beginning with this guidance, because of our NOL position, we will no longer use a 35% effective tax rate in our calculation of as adjusted earnings as we have in the past.

Going forward, our as adjusted EPS calculation will not include any adjustments for taxes.

In other words, we'll use our GAAP taxes for that calculation.

On that basis, exclusive of unusual or non-operating items such as amortization of intangibles and share-based payment expense related to 123R, we expect our as adjusted net income for Q1 will be in a range of 19 to $0.24 per diluted share.

Now, Operator, we'll take questions from the sell-side analysts.

Thank you.

Thank you. [OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS] We'll go first to Tim Savageaux of Merriman.

How did that happen?

Good morning, guys, and congratulations on a nice quarter.

Thanks, Tim.

Question about the guidance and potential visibility.

Your low single-digit sequential guidance is sort of in line with what you were able to achieve last year in a similar quarter though significant year-over-year growth.

You talked in the press release about the potential for that, what I gather is the potential for that sequential growth rate to accelerate going forward.

I wonder if you could amplify on sort of that commentary and what might give you visibility towards that?

It looks as if some of the major U.S. carriers here didn't contribute that greatly in the quarter, at least relative to recent quarters and could accelerate that BT might not have been there or actually may have, actually, but in terms of major contract wins, continued 4200 ramp, as you talk about accelerating sequential revenue growth, last year you were able to accelerate up towards the double-digit sequential level.

If you could discuss that overall visibility issue and what gives you the confidence to talk about that.

Yes, why don't I start with that, Tim.

I mean, I think if we look at the visibility that we have right now, it's always based on a confluence of factors.

I think we saw a strong order intake in Q4 so from a backlog point of view, I think we've got good visibility.

We look at the market dynamics and the engagements with our customers and in addition to the orders, I think we see a lot of receptivity to the kind of transition architectures that we're offering, so the overall interactions with our customers I think we're seeing is very positive.

In addition to some of the specifics around some of the new products and the new features and functionality that we've got coming to market which really spread the strength of the 4200, if you will, and deploy that FlexSelect architecture across the portfolio, I think if you put all of those factors together, and I think that's what gives us the degree of confidence around continuing to outgrow the market and continuing to increase potentially the sequential growth rate going forward.

Just a quick housekeeping follow-up, Joe.

When you talk about the diluted share count, is there an interest add back anywhere there as you adjust your numbers for the converts or how are you approaching that?

Yes, there was, Tim.

Excellent pick up.

Only the .25% convertible notes though.

Okay.

So not much of a coupon then, right?

No.

Okay.

Thank you.

We'll go next to Paul Silverstein of Credit Suisse.

Thanks.

Two quick questions.

One on cash flow and operating margin.

Joe, I trust given the numbers you're talking about on the bottom line for the first quarter, that 10% savings you made back at the analyst day a couple months back that was such a to-do, would it be fair to say that was not guidance or any thoughts in terms of the outlook?

I know you're not talking about full-year guidance, but when you look at your profitability given what you're putting up, it sure looks like you could do better than 10% for the year.

Let me take that.

The dialogue around the 10% number, again, maybe let me take the approach of it.

It's a milestone and it's the next stop in this power story.

In terms of whether we can do better than 10% for the year?

We'll address that as we go through each of the quarters and we'll give you guidance and just see where the business goes.

But let us get there and stabilize and then Gary and I will talk and see what else we can share with you.

Just very quickly on cash flow, when do you project getting back to positive operating cash flow?

That's an excellent question because we debated quite heavily whether we wanted to discuss that.

There are scenarios, Paul, where we could be there in the first quarter but, again, because things are reasonably, they fluctuate around here and a lot of it has to do with when you collect the AR and so fourth and so on and there are a lot of moving parts but you could be there in the first quarter.

Great.

Thanks a lot.

We'll go next to Brant Thompson of Goldman Sachs.

Hi, guys.

I was wondering if you could expand on kind of two things.

When you look at the pipeline of business for the following year that you guys have given some confidence that there's some acceleration throughout the year, is there any one or two customer accounts out there that are potentially underpinning this or could you talk about the size of the potential wins that are left out there in terms of what's getting bid is the first question.

And the second is when you talk about your op ex and your op ex control over the year and continuing to invest in R&D, how should we be thinking about that in terms of absolute levels going forward?

Is there an absolute level once you push up against that you feel like you'll be able to hold the line on as we go through the quarters like an absolute max or something like that?

Thanks.

Thanks, Brant.

Why don't I take the first part of that and Joe will take the second.

You know, if I look at the foundation that we have now, and this is very deliberate what we focused on when we began rebuilding the Company, if you will, after the telco collapse in 2002, one of the things we wanted to do was to build a broader based Company.

Now, easily said but challenging to do, requires two basic things.

One, a broader product offering and two, a broader customer base, and I think we've been working diligently at that over the last few years, both of which are challenging but I think we're in a position now where from a portfolio point of view around our specialty FlexSelect architecture, I think we've made very good progress on that.

On the customer base side, I'd put it into two categories, Brant.

I'd say if you look at our sort of Tier 1 major telco carriers, we've got a fair base of those now, so that in any one quarter what we've been able to do, you know, in achieving 11 sequential quarters of growth, when one is digesting installation, et cetera.

Another one is ordering and trying to get a broad balance between that is clearly the endeavor and I think if you look at our customer base now in North America, it's Sprint, it's Qwest, it's Bell South, it's AT&T, it's Verizon, et cetera.

We've got a strong customer base there and the international with British Telecom, with Telmex, with Korea Telecom, et cetera, we've got a broadening base now, and so that enables us, I think, to have more confidence around being able to deliver better than market performance.

The other thing that I'd turn to is what I talked about in some of my earlier comments which is we see strong growth in the newest sectors, if you will, of government, research and education, some of the Enterprise verticals which are new to Ciena, and certainly, some of the position in the cable space where we have seven of the top ten cable cos in North America, it gives us some diversity across all of that that but, again, makes us stronger as a business and allows us, I think, both more visibility and a more stable business model.

All right, Brant, Joe here.

Just to make sure I confirm your question so I answer it appropriately.

Your question was regarding op ex, it was regarding R&D investment and do you want to go a little bit further with that so I make sure I nail it?

Yes, I just wanted to understand when we think about the op ex line if I look at the op ex over the last, say, four quarters you went from about 62 to $63 million type of level down to as low as 59 and so I'm just, when we think about the absolute level running at, are we still in those ranges throughout next year?

Do we step slightly above that?

Is there any way you can just talk a little bit about maybe some absolute targets?

Thanks.

Yes, let me try and take that without going too far beyond the one quarter guidance we just gave you.

In general, I'd say that it's going to be a range and the range is a function of the timing of big expenses that are one offs, whether it be a [inaudible], whether it be a prototype other than some of the consulting resources that Steve's using but I think it's going to be a range.

That range, I feel, is going to be better off in the low 60s to the mid 60s maybe the mid 60 range more as you get towards the end of the year.

I would look for the percent of sales relationship thing more to normalize as you get towards the end of the year because one of the things that Gary -- we've always talked about that 15-15-5 model and that's really what we're directing everything to.

Thanks.

Thanks, Brantley.

We'll go next to Nikos Theodosopoulos of UBS.

Hi, Nikos.

Sir, please check your mute button.

Hello?

Yes, we can hear you now.

Hello?

Nikos, we're here.

Go ahead.

We can hear you.

Sorry about that.

I just had a couple of questions.

The deferred revenue went up sequentially again.

Can you comment on that?

And also in the finished good inventories, is that reflective of inventory at customer sites or stuff that you built in anticipation of orders?

Thank you.

Let me start with the first one.

The last one first because that is the biggest one, Nikos.

On the finished good front, we have finished goods, yes, we do have finished goods off site at customer locations because in many of those cases, we have to wait for acceptance, it needs to be installed and there are some large numbers out there but we typically don't go into that in a little detail so let me also add that to it.

In addition, there is, or there are finished goods inland to come as well as a couple of places around the world that are in anticipation of customer demand.

It's even better than that in some cases.

We're finding that especially when you look at the 4200 with the type of box that is and the application it's playing into, we need to be able to turn pretty quickly on a dime and we're able to do that and we've been making some people pretty happy.

As it relates to the deferred revenue, the increase that's predominantly in the area of services and it doesn't have anything to do with hardware if that's where you're going.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

All right

We'll go next to Marcus Kupferschmidt of Lehman Brothers.

Hi.

A clarification if you don't mind before I ask a question about the business.

Joe, the guidance for interest income up $1million sequentially, is that a, does that include the convert add back, because my sense is your interest income grew nicely about $2 million sequentially.

I don't think you're saying that on a pro forma non-GAAP basis, net interest income is declining sequentially, is it?

No.

I think we gave you guidance that's pretty much going to be the same number, Marcus.

All right

So now you can ask your only one question?

Sure.

So bigger picture question, I guess.

For the quarter, the [Catina] and the DM business were both down noticeably sequentially.

Do you think that we've seen a change in the customer appetite for those products or how they're using them or do you think that's kind of a temporary thing in part driven by maybe some carrier consolidation in the near-term?

Marcus, why don't I take that.

I mean, I think, we're seeing some fluctuations in it.

We've seen some in the past.

You know, I'd say overall we continued to believe that both of these areas still offer attractive growth prospects as part of the overall portfolio, particularly on the access pace.

The DM specifically, you know, I think we're seeing the change really as a result of some of our efforts to move some of that functionality to other platforms.

So I think that particular platform, I think you're going to see some fluctuations but a lot of that functionality is moving over to things like the 4200 and even CoreDirector as well.

In terms of [Catina], any other comments?

I think the access space, you know, we continue to think that that could be a growth area for us.

We've invested in it.

We've got a number of developments that we invested in in the last couple of years that will come to fruition this year, so we actually think that that space still, in longer term, offers growth prospects for us.

All right.

Thank you.

Thanks, Marcus.

We'll go next to Cobb Sadler of Deutsche Bank.

Thanks a lot.

Just two quick questions.

On the finished goods, in following up on Marcus' question, would broadband access and data [inaudible] products be in that number that increased materially quarter-over-quarter?

Well, they're not, they are definitely not the reason for the increase but there is some finished goods in that number, yes.

Got it.

And then on gross margins, North America, you know, you've won a few deals there that should start contributing next year and my take is that they're more WDM than maybe CN 4200 but yet it looks like volumes are going to be up materially, so do you think that gross margins, the mid 40s range is a good way to look at it for the full-year?

I know you don't want to give guidance but could you just talk about how maybe product mix and volumes work a couple quarters out?

Thanks.

Yes.

I mean I think we'd still look at the overall gross margins in the mid 40s range.

It's going to fluctuate quarter-to-quarter as we've seen, but I think you've got some offsetting issues in terms of high gross margins to low gross margin activity across the whole portfolio and I think we, right now, our best perspective is that we believe we can maintain it in that mid 40s range for the year.

Okay.

Great.

Thanks a lot.

We'll go to Ehud Gelblum of JPMorgan.

Hi.

Can you hear me?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Great.

Thanks.

A couple quick questions if I could.

First of all, I didn't hear, I may have missed it from my cell phone, Joe, did you give the amount of 4200 revenues in the backlog the way you did last quarter?

And then Gary, if you could talk a little bit about the, just the entire environment on North America wireline, the appetite, demand, specifically for optical but overall number of companies in various other areas have been citing slowdown due to the BellSouth [inaudible] merger that [maybe] some of the impact that you've seen on the CNX 5 and your DM product [but] want to comment on what you're seeing out of the customer base, are they slowing down their spending or is that really not impacting you at all?

And then Gary, also, at the analyst day that you had, if I can remember your wording, you said that the number that the street had out for next year of 686 you said was not unachievable and you saw various scenarios where that could be higher.

In the weeks and months that have passed since then, has anything changed your opinion on that and have any of those scenarios become even more likely or less likely based on kind of what you're seeing in the demand space?

Thank you.

All right, Ehud, I'll do the first one.

Gary's still writing down that one question you asked.

In the case of the 4200 [inaudible] revenue earlier [inaudible] our dialogue, the revenue for Q4 for the 4200 was $22.7 million up pretty strongly from Q3 where it was only $11.5 million.

We didn't give you any backlog commentary like we did last quarter but I think it's safe to say that it is very, very strong.

Is it same size as last quarter?

I don't think we're going to go quite that far.

Why don't I take the other couple of questions.

First of all, I think your question is really, the second question is really specific around sort of the North American environment with the mergers and what are we seeing there.

I think that our experience so far to it has been that as the consolidations have happened, I think we're pretty well positioned, we think, in most of those, and I think the underlying dynamics of that are twofold.

One, you've got sort of success-based demand to put on to the network and if you look at our install base there, it's extensive, so clearly, we're receiving some of the benefit of that.

I think the second dynamic, as I talked about earlier, is really the shift in the migration that many of these carriers are now looking at to reduce their op ex and migrate their architectures more towards software configure at Ethernet based IP architectures.

And I think so far that's playing well with us, so we see in part some people moving budget around but overall, I think our exposure to it is in the higher growth areas and the necessity areas, if you will, around those carriers moving forward.

So, so far so good in terms of how we're viewing our position in the North American space regards consolidation.

Specifically concerning our outlook for the year and has anything changed since our analyst meeting, it wasn't that long ago we had our analyst meeting, I would say that as we look out 12 months.

I would also say that I think things are pretty much unchanged to that.

I think the consensus figure out their 686, we wanted to give some comment on that for the year and I think as the business stabilizes, we want to look further and further out which is how we want to kind of position and talk about the business.

I still think that's a reasonable figure.

It's not without its risks and it's not without its upside.

I don't think anything's really changed from that.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll go to Tim Long of Banc of America.

Thank you.

Just a question, Gary, I think you talked about the government business ticking up and seeing a lot of opportunity there.

Could you just give us a little more detail on the product set that you're seeing more interest in from the government vertical and just give us the sense how meaningful that is to the business now and when it could be 5 or 10% or more contributor?

Thanks.

Tim, why don't I ask Steve to comment on some of the architecture stuff as he's been close to a lot of that government interaction over the last couple of years.

So with the government space in particular what we see is increasing interest both for high capacity but as well as very high resiliency sorts of network architectures and that speaks quite nicely to what combinations of CoreDirector 4200 and CoreStream are able to offer.

And as alluded to earlier, we're generating a lot of, call them, let's say, Ethernet features to those platforms and as more and more of the, call it the government network, makes that transition over towards Ethernet services, we find ourselves pretty well positioned to be able to provide that sort of a network architecture.

Yes, in terms of likely sort of revenues, Tim, I mean I'd put it in a range and clearly over time, I think sort a of 5 to 10% range would not be unreasonable for this business from what we're seeing.

I don't think we're there yet but if you look at 12 months to 18 months, particularly if you include, as Steve as saying, the research and education space, I think 5 to 10% of our business is [non] non-realistic perspective.

Okay.

Thank you.

We'll go to Michael Genovese of Citigroup.

Great.

Thanks a lot.

Hey, Gary, Joe, Steve.

So, could you comment at all on the linearity of the quarter that you just reported as well as the quarter that we're in now, we're about a month and a half into it, so half way?

Any comments that you could possibly give on how the linearity of this quarter is shaping up.

And then just as a quick follow-up, if you could tell us how Suzanne is doing, that'd be great.

Thanks.

Well, let's do the second one.

I figure she's listening because she's already sent me two e-mails, but she's doing good.

We're all waiting for the pictures.

She said she was on a two hour feeding cycle otherwise she probably would have sent us more comments she had.

But I better not go any further because I'm getting ugly looks from the room.

So let's go on to your business question.

In terms of the linearity for the quarters, I'd say it was very characteristic to every other quarter we have which is not very linear at all.

In the case of the shipments I'd say they bubble mid quarter and naturally, a lot of times where they peak, Mike, and then what, it's a chase for the rev/rec in getting all of the acceptance certificates and that's really what you do a lot towards the end of the quarter.

I think it's been reasonably characteristic and that's about what it means.

You tend to get into some bigger shipments at the end of the quarter, not necessarily the peak for the quarter, but really a whole lot is driving the following quarter because our visibility into the business is getting, it's as good as it has been and therefore, you ship a lot in the end and you for the next quarter.

Great.

Thanks.

We'll go to Samuel Wilson of JMP Securities.

Hi, this is Jonathan Curtis for Sam.

Just a couple quick questions.

On the, when you look at the RFP activity that's coming in, what percent of them are primarily Ethernet based?

And then also, just would love to get your comments on the prospects for partnerships with some of the other equipment vendors in the market who haven't been investing as heavily in optical and some of the good spaces that you guys have over past three or four years.

So, with regard to the RFP's, let me say they're Ethernet based, I'd say almost all of the carriers, large enterprises, government [R&D] folks, almost everybody has interest in moving over towards the Ethernet enabled or Ethernet based networking and so you find them spread pretty uniformly across all of the RFPs, some of them clearly, let's say, focus entirely in the Ethernet space.

Others are looking at it as future adds and such but it's a very common theme throughout all of the [inaudible] that we're looking at today.

On the second part of it, in terms of partnerships and that falls into a number of categories.

Clearly, we have an expanding partner program in terms of channels to market both in terms of addressing geography and in terms of addressing verticals, things like the enterprise space, things like some of the cable market and the government markets, we actually go through partners some of which are the large carriers in the enterprise arms of the large carriers.

Particularly we've been successful with that and as we get to new geographies, partners become an increasingly important part of our business and we're gearing up a lot of our infrastructure and in terms of our training programs and positioning around that, and we'll continue to expand that program.

From time to time, we'll also look to partner where we bring in for particular technologies into the portfolio that we don't strategically think we need to own those.

We'll continue to do that.

We have some now and generally that's going well as part of filling out our portfolio and we'll continue to develop that going forward.

And a quick follow-up on pricing dynamics in the market, what are you seeing happening?

Pricing is still challenging and it has been for a while.

It remains very competitive, however, I think that's what's driven us to make sure that our value proposition is differentiated.

It's application focused, and I think that's articulated more than anything in the gross margin growth that we had last year.

I think that's validation of our value proposition in the market place, but overall, the pricing continues to be competitive and I don't, you know, I have no expectation that that's going to change.

So we need to build that into our business model and into our quest for innovation going forward.

Great.

Thank you.

We'll go to Hasan Imam of Thomas Weisel.

Hi, thanks.

Great quarter.

A couple quick questions.

First one if I may go back to the gross margin question, at least one thesis was that as metro ramped strongly and offset some of the lower margin long-haul business, we would see a gross margin ramp, just wondering why that is.

Is it because we're still in the initial phase of metro deployments?

And then the second question, if I may, for Gary, could you comment on the current competitive landscape, you know, both the previous group of income [inaudible] like Nortel, Lucent and newcomers, what you're seeing out there?

Thank you.

Yes.

Why don't I take the margin piece.

I think one of the things that sort of Joe articulated in some of his comments earlier on whilst we're still, for comparison purposes, trying to provide you detail around the product platforms that, frankly, becoming less relevant in terms of really evaluating how the business is doing, and we spend more time internally looking at what's the application it's going into and that drives more of the business model around the gross margins, et cetera.

So I'd just caution a little around the historical segmentation and using those to frame a business model around what the gross margins are and I know that's a challenge because all this blurs, it's a challenge for us internally as well.

So it's a very broad portfolio now and so it's not necessarily as simplistic as if metro goes up and that's a higher gross margin and transport goes down et cetera.

There are applications in all of those areas where some of the gross margins are incredibly differentiated.

In terms of competition, I think some more of the legacy players, we continue to, I think, benefit from some of their under investment during the last four to five years as we continued to invest heavily.

I think we're seeing some geographic, certainly newcomers from China, some of the indigenous vendors there, and that's principally on price, not functionality.

We see them from time to time, particularly in Europe, but again, I'd talk about the need to be differentiated in the marketplace and I think that's where we've put our efforts over the last few years and that's being validated in our financial performance.

There are a couple of smaller players that are newcomers in there and what we don't see is any new dislocating technology and I think we're quite confident in our value proposition, being able to be very competitive going forward.

So just a follow-up on that.

When you do lose a deal, for example, you're saying it's primarily due to kind of lower cost versus technology differentiation?

Yes.

I think as a broad brush, I would say if you lose price, you lose typically, it's for a couple of things.

One is pricing, particularly from some of the Asian vendors, but that's not really a large part of our marketplace.

I would stress that.

Some of our portfolio will play in the lower end of that but that's not really our core value proposition in where we're driving the business.

The second area where as a smaller or agile player, we've always had challenges is in incumbents in competing with the large incumbents who can bundle and manage the particular RFPs et cetera.

That's becoming less of an issue as we become more and more incumbent, and we're very focused on making sure we've got a very sharp value proposition that negates those kinds of issues.

So I would say still, from time to time, if you look at it globally, it's incumbency and then price, but certainly not from a technology point of view.

Great.

Thank you.

Due to time constraints we will take our final again from Simon Leopold of Morgan Keegan.

Great.

Thank you.

I wanted to squeeze in my clarification and then the real question.

On the clarification side, you reported some software sales of about $3.7 million and services of, I guess, 18.8 or so.

In the past, I think, have you reported those combined or was the software distributed across products or did I just miss these previous segmentation?

And then in terms of the question, it does look like you're continuing to get strength out of your optical business in terms of a percent of sales that group of products, and over the past history you had made acquisitions to diversify away from optics and we've had the data networking products as an example and the access products.

If you could talk about how you're envisioning the strategy of diversifying further and moving away from optics or do you see yourself as really going back to your roots and emphasizing your optical strength?

Thank you.

Okay.

Simon, let me do number one.

In fact it's a great question because if you recall in my prepared remarks I talked about how we talked to you about products and how potentially over time it could change or fluctuate or vary and this is a great example of where it did vary a little bit this time.

In the past, we've put, since a lot of the software is ON-Center and it's tied to the CoreTransport or the CoreDirector market of a long-haul piece there, it's been lumped in and grouped there sometimes when we talk about it.

This time around we thought we would spike it out for you and I'm glad you picked up on that differentiation because it just helps to emphasize the way we're going to try and approach this on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

So Gary?

Or Steve?

And in terms of the strategy with regards to optical, I think what you need to do is look at optical as one of the key technologies in this pallet of technologies that we've created and anything that basically goes at hundreds of megabits up into the gigabits to 10-gigabits up to 100-gigabits is going to be optically based, and so you can continue to expect optical technologies to show up throughout the portfolio, throughout all of the product platforms.

But to that key foundation, shall we say, we've added an awful lot of other capabilities around Ethernet, the Layer 2 processing and such.

So we really approached it, as Gary alluded to earlier, from the pallet of technologies approach and then it's a matter of how you express those technologies in the products that you bring to market.

Simon, does that answer your question?

And sir, you may signal star one if that did answer your question.

And apparently it did.

And at this time I'll turn the conference back to our speakers for any closing remarks.

Thank you.

I'd like to thank everyone for their time this morning, for your continued support and to wish everybody a happy and safe holiday.

Thank you.

That does conclude today's conference call.

We thank you for your participation.

You may disconnect at this time.