Cheryl Beranek
Management
Hello, this is Cheryl Beranek, President and CEO of Clearfield. Welcome to our Fiscal First Quarter 2017 FieldReport. Before we begin today, I'd like to provide some important cautions regarding forward-looking statements made during today's presentation. Certain important factors could have a material impact on the company's performance including those set forth in the slide entitled Important Cautions Regarding Forward-looking Statements as well as the factors set forth in Clearfield's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It's an exciting time for Clearfield. The momentum established in FY '16 continues into this new fiscal year as we prove out how our fiber management and pathway products reduce the total cost of ownership of broadband networks for telco cable, wireless and municipal networks. Revenues for the quarter increased consistent with the outlook we have provided. Moreover, as announcements accelerate regarding the hundreds of planned fiber deployments throughout the country, our market development initiatives are in full force throughout the broadband service community aimed at gaining incremental approvals and the potential of issuing accelerated growth outlook projections. Revenue for the first quarter grew by 16% year-over-year to $18.3 million, reflecting strong growth in our wireline and wireless markets despite a seasonally-driven reduction in demand from our cable TV customers. Our sales to the Tier 1 group represented nearly 10% of our total revenue for the quarter in comparison to representing 4% of all fiscal 2016's revenue. Complementing our continued success in our wireline markets was yet another quarter of encouraging growth in our revenue from the wireless market, which increased by 38% compared to the same period a year ago. Partly because of the advances we made in penetrating the Tier 1 group, our gross margins for the quarter came in slightly below our 40% to 42% target range. We believe this reflects our initial success in selling to the Tier 1 customers, which we are striving to build upon by achieving the necessary industry certifications to sell to them more aggressively. As we have stated before, these certifications do require a lot of time and investment, but we are confident that we are moving nicely along the individual testing phases and that achieving these certifications will only enhance our supplier position within each of the major Tier 1 players. But before I discuss our operational results, growth strategies and future outlook in greater detail, I would like to turn the presentation over to our CFO, Dan Herzog, who will walk us through the financial performance for the first quarter of fiscal 2017.