Good day and welcome to Clearfield Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Greg McNiff, Investor Relations for Clearfield. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Joining me on the call today are Cheri Beranek, Clearfield’s President and CEO; Dan Herzog, Clearfield’s CFO; and Kevin Morgan, Clearfield’s CMO. As a reminder, the slides in this presentation are controlled by you, the listener. Please advance forward through the presentation as the speaker presents their remarks. Please note that during this call, management will be making remarks regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. These remarks constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. It is important to also note that the company undertakes no obligation to update such statements except as required by law. The company cautions you to consider risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements contained in today’s press release, earnings presentation, and on this conference call. The Risk Factors section in Clearfield’s most recent Form 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and its subsequent filings on Form 10-Q provide a description of these risks. They are also summarized on Slide 2 of the earnings presentation. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Clearfield’s President and CEO, Cheri Beranek. Cheri?

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Clearfield’s results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2023. We also intend to provide an update on our business and current market trends. A new year is a time for reflection, and as I reflect on the last 12 months, the pendulum swings of our market has been extreme. As we started fiscal year 2023, demand in the industry seemed insatiable as service providers emerging from the pandemic focused on ensuring they had the materials necessary to deploy equipment as their labor constraints eased. Unfortunately, the reality of building a network is hard, and navigating the numerous obstacles coming out of the pandemic have been challenging for our customers and the industry. Yet the difficulty toward the end of this period has put the lens on what Clearfield does best to reduce the cost of fiber deployment by making the process as efficient as possible. In addition to the need to reduce service provider inventory levels across the market, industry analysts are reporting that they expect the torrid pace of deployment to slow down as some operators reduce their homes past goals and extend fiber expansion and overbuild into 2024. They cite many socioeconomic reasons for this reduction in pace, including managing their CapEx budgets and higher interest rates. Yet, and importantly, no one is forecasting a reduction in the end user demand for high-speed broadband. Our fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 results reflect the current state of the industry and are consistent with the commentary that we have provided throughout the year. Total net sales for the fourth quarter were $49.7 million, which includes a $10.6 million contribution from Nestor Cables. Dan will discuss our financial results for this quarter and fiscal year in more…

Thank you, Cheri. We are now in the middle of a historic fiber build-out with more ahead of us than behind us. As many of you know, the $42.5 billion BEAD program is now underway with initial disbursements to the states and territories. As illustrated on Slide 5, industry forecasts from RVA indicate the next five-year period will see up to 12 million additional homes passed with fiber because of federal funding initiatives. Our internal expectation is that this additional build-out may extend to 2029 and beyond because of delays in awards and variability associated with rural fiber builds. These programs will bring high-speed Internet access to unserved and underserved areas that will boost the total homes passed in the next five years in the U.S. market to over 57 million homes. As Cheri noted, building a fiber network is hard work. Clearfield remains focused on developing products that reduce both the time to deploy as well as the amount of skill needed to connect homes to the fiber network. The industry has rewarded Clearfield’s approach to product development as the company’s revenue has grown at a pace faster than the market. This slide illustrates the market performance in five-year periods set against Clearfield’s revenue growth over the same period. Clearfield’s focus on helping service providers improve their time to revenue is our driving value proposition and why we believe in the long-term market opportunity for the company. Coming back to Clearfield’s performance, I’d now like to pass the call over to our CFO, Dan Herzog, who will walk us through our financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full-year 2023.

Thank you, Kevin, and good afternoon, everyone. Please turn to Slide 7 to look at our fiscal fourth quarter and full-year 2023 results in more detail. Consolidated net sales in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 were $49.7 million, a 48% decrease from $95 million in the same year ago period. This figure includes $39.1 million of organic net sales of port Clearfield and a $10.6 million contribution from Nestor Cables. The sequential decrease in Nestor Cables revenue over the previous quarters is primarily due to seasonality. While Nestor Cables exhibited strong year-over-year top line growth, we remain focused on reducing costs and improving margins at Nestor, by investing in more efficient manufacturing equipment and introducing higher margin plug-and-play connectivity products from Clearfield and higher margin specialty cables, Nestor can produce and sell to the European market. The year-over-year decrease in total net sales was due to the ongoing industry dynamics in our Clearfield segment that Cheri described earlier, that our peers in the marketplace have reported over the last several months. Order backlog declined 65% to $57.3 million on September 30, 2023 from $164.9 million on September 30, 2022 and $74.7 million on June 30, 2023. We continue to collaborate with our customers to align their open orders with their deployment schedules. As Cheri noted, our lead times are now less than four weeks across most product lines. We expect backlog to become less of an indicator for future sales as most orders will be fulfilled within the quarter they are received. Due to the timing of our year end, we don’t have visibility yet to the calendar year 2024 outlook from our regional service providers and MSO customers, who normally book on a more scheduled basis. We continue to work closely with our customers to monitor their inventory…

Thanks for the financial update, Dan. With a strong balance sheet, the company is in good position to weather the dynamics that are affecting our market over the short-term. We are taking a long-term approach with strategic intention, positioning the company to meet the significant demand ahead. Turning to Slide 19. I would now like to provide an update on our multi-year strategic plan, which we have labeled LEAP. LEAP is our roadmap for how we intend to capitalize on the significant opportunities ahead when industry demand begins to recover. I previously mentioned our new product offerings. Now I’d like to emphasize a few additional initiatives that we are actively pursuing. First, we are recruiting expertise in new markets, especially in Europe where we intend to leverage our Nestor platform to cross-sell connectivity products into Europe. We are also investing in our Estonia facility for Microduct and connectivity manufacturing. Second, our ongoing operational initiatives continue to drive cost reductions and to improve our gross profit once business conditions improve. And third, we are updating our ERP systems to improve operational efficiency and to unify company systems. As I said at the beginning of our call, today, a new year comes with many reflections of the past. I am proud of the execution that Clearfield has demonstrated since the start of the pandemic. Since our inception, Clearfield has strategically grown the organization while delivering consistent profitability. To achieve this scale, Clearfield made substantial infrastructure investments, resulting in under absorbed overhead that will negatively affect our earnings power over the next few quarters. However, we remain confident that the future growth in fiber is absolute, and Clearfield stands ready to deliver on that demand as our market returns to its normalized pace. And with that, we will open the call to your questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Jason Schmidt with Lake Street. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions. Understanding sort of the normal seasonal pattern, sort of the softness in the first half of this year due to weather. Can you just remind us if December traditionally is the trough quarter for the year? Just given what you’ve seen the past couple of years and kind of seasonality getting thrown out the window. How should we think about kind of December potentially being the low point?

Yes. Historically, actually the first and second quarter are usually pretty similar in that we start out strong in October and that we’re still building them, and then slowdown for the holidays and the budget season, and then slow back bring – come back up for the spring. So the bigger issue isn’t the weather in first quarter, but it’s how quickly we get to spring and second quarter that could influence how much stronger second quarter might be than first.

Okay. That’s really helpful. And then have you transitioned all the Nestor product lines over to your Mexico facility at this point?

Yes. We are manufacturing all but one or two of the fibers in the Mexican facility, and that movement continues, so that we can do it really on a strategic kind of case by case basis. Part of that is related to inventory, in that we have some inventory of the products that we are not yet producing that we would have transferred into the Mexican plant. So it’s being done as inventory conditions dictate.

Got you. And then just the last one from me, and I’ll jump back into queue. OpEx took a step back in the September quarter. Dan, how should we think about OpEx trending through fiscal 2024?

Yes. So if you were to look at our historical OpEx, this quarter is a little bit lower, obviously, but we did have some savings that took place. And if you were to look at more, our Q3 of this past year, Q1, Q2 had a little bit of a benefit in there. If you look at our Q3, it’s probably somewhere closer to that. And on a run rate basis, it’s probably going to be pretty steady going forward from there.

Okay. Perfect. Thanks a lot, guys.

Thank you.

Next question is Scott Searle with Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Hey Cheri, I apologize if this was covered earlier, but in terms of the outlook to the December quarter, I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more color in the specific categories of customers where you’re seeing that weakness. And then, Dan, as it relates to the gross margins, obviously, you take a utilization hit, and I think that’s embedded in your guidance there. But it goes pretty low the gross margins in the December quarter. How quickly does that start to come back, as you would expect utilization to start to pick up in the second, third, fourth fiscal quarters in 2024?

Yes. I’ll go to the gross margin right away in that, yes, you’re right. There are some definite volume and capacity issues that the volume really has a huge effect on us. So it is low. Q2, we would expect to potentially be slightly better than that. And then we really start to pick up in Q3 and Q4. And so we would exit – we may exit Q4 in a much more – we’d be making up that labor capacity, excess capacity, and fixed overhead coverage much stronger. But it starts to really – it starts to get better at Q3 and Q4, Scott.

Okay.

Yes. In regard to where we’re seeing the weakness, it’s the large regionals. The large regionals have kind of a combination of pulling back from previous numbers and that you’ve seen some reductions in plans based upon their availability to hit numbers. And then secondarily at another carrier, they’ve taken a step back based upon realigning their balance sheet and kind of taking a step back on CapEx as…

CapEx, yes.

Thank you. CapEx as their financial plans kind of come in order. It seems to be temporary and more of a migratory issue as they figure out really kind of where they’re going to go with their BEAD dollars and whether or not they’re going to take any ACAM dollars for any particular market. But community broadband, the bigger carrier, the larger carrier, the more money is an issue, which is where the large regionals play. The community broadband players, I would say, they’re stronger, less of a weakness. But the difference for today versus a year ago is it’s no longer a race. I say a year ago, because of all of the uncertainty and all of the big guys fighting against the little guys and the MSOs fighting against the large regionals. It was a race to see who was going to get there first, and as a result, that’s where the inventory buildup came. Today, the cadence seems practical and prudent. And eventually, as the large carriers get underway, we’ll be back to a more normalized rhythm, a more normalized cadence.

Cheri, maybe just to follow-up, what is that normalized run rate when you’re looking at deployments versus working through inventory absorption at your customers? And I guess, as part of that, it sounds like ACAM is factoring into the calculus as well here in terms of delays. Ultimately, I would think that’s a good thing, as is BEAD. But is that a primary culprit here in terms of customers pausing as they figure out ACAM or BEAD?

Right. It’s definitely a pause in the smaller carrier. So in community broadband. As some of our peers who we work very closely with have outlined in their calls in the last few weeks. The expansion and the continuation of ACAM is a fantastic thing for our marketplace in that it provides another almost $20 billion into our market or 50% more than what was originally thought was going to come from the government. But in most situations, it is an either or decision. And as a result, companies need to very carefully make a decision as to what they’re going to do to assure that they don’t get cut off by making a mistake. And I think there’s enough time in the BEAD programs and in the BEAD calendar to allow these service providers to do that. Back to the normalized cadence, from the time that you see an engineering design come into play until the time that you see first shovel can be as short as three to four months, but it’s more often closer to a year. And in our world, we work really closely with those engineering design companies. They’re still extremely bullish about what BEAD is going to do for us. And so I would watch the activity of those engineering companies next year to really show how strong the second half of 2024 and into 2025 is going to be for fiber construction.

Great. Thank you.

Next question Ryan Koontz with Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

Thanks for the question. You made a comment about the rural market, with the longer loops being a higher TAM market for you, I think of that as being having a bigger impact on the actual fiber cable itself on homes past as opposed to connectivity. Maybe you can expand on why the connectivity TAM is larger. Is that just because the density per unit is lower and you need to spend more on a fewer number of homes?

No, it actually goes back to the fiber, as you indicated, in that most of the association with connecting a home, the largest percentage of the cost is the actual fiber cable itself. And so if your home is 500 miles, yes – 500 feet from your terminal box versus a mile from the terminal box, it heavily influences what the cost of your drop cable is going to be. And so the further out those individual houses are, the more opportunity there is for both drop cable and terminal devices. Again, you might see multiple terminals being strung and feeding off of each other in order to get to that end, which is another reason why the total available market is larger. In general, we’re working to – I think that’s one of the things that sometimes gets overlooked, is Clearfield is investing strongly to increase our total available market during this low, in that we came out into the marketplace last year with a range of pedestals. It’s pretty common knowledge we’re going to come out with a vault, which is going to be able to be used with every cabinet that we’re going to – that we’ll be deploying. And Clearfield has historically been a company associated with passing homes, not as much connecting homes. And so we have a very strong initiative about using our market presence to get more of the homes connected to be using Clearfield equipment. And you saw sea change being announced last spring, which is undergoing field trials over the course of this first year, which we believe will represent additional revenue opportunities and additional TAM for us next year and beyond.

Got it. That’s helpful, Cheri. Thank you. And just a quick follow-up on the cable market, any difference there between – that’s obviously the numbers have been a little depressed there. Is that similar inventory issues? Are you seeing any changes in architecture pauses in programs? Maybe you can kind of make any broad comments about cable.

I think the cable market is for those individuals, those individual companies who are committed to fiber to the home. There’s been no change in that commitment, and they continue to build and being committed to the new architectures. For those companies, the larger companies who have retained their commitment to the doctor’s position, I haven’t seen a change. But what we have been involved with is a higher number of hub collapses and other types of areas in which they’re taking fiber deeper into their networks. And as a result, have a need for both passive and active cabinets to serve into that space.

All right. Thanks, Cheri.

Next question Greg Mesniaeff with WestPark. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. And you mentioned earlier in your prepared remarks that lead times have shrunk to less than four weeks and that the majority of the business going forward will be book and ship business. How has that impacted, and how do you expect it will impact pricing?

Clearfield’s business before the pandemic was always book and ship, and we had some of the best lead times in the industry and, in fact, have really worked very closely with our customers to assure that we could align the equipment that they needed at the time that we could ship it. I think from a pricing standpoint, in regard to customer pricing, there’s always, in a time of oversupply, there is a price pressure on the manufacturer in that the service providers are commanding. They’re the buyers, they’re in the strongest position. But in general, we are working toward what we call price discipline in that we will not lose market share to for – on good business. But we also will ensure that should there be inappropriate pricing in the marketplace that is not sustainable that we won’t be tempted to follow.

Great. And as a – just a companion to that question. As the BEAD program unfolds, how do you expect that program to impact pricing? Is it going to be pretty much no impact or there will be some changes in willingness to pay things like that?

Oh, there’ll be the – the BEAD program by definition of the BABA initiative, which is Build America, is going to increase the cost of materials. I mean, there’s no if ands or buts about that in that any product that is labor intensive to build, such as the termination of fiber connectivity. If we bring that back into the U.S. market, it takes the same amount of labor. It’s just that the labor costs a lot more in the U.S. And so most of my peers, when we meet at a trade show have been talking about the fact that we’ll have two SKUs of the same product, just one made in America and one made in a lower cost labor market. And they’ll have two different costs, two different selling prices.

Got it. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. First question was on international revenue. And I know there’s some seasonality there. Typically, what are you expecting for Q1 out of international or what’s implied in your guidance?

It’s cold in Finland and very dark. So the – and the go a good percentage, 70% of their businesses is, a lot business for European is in Finland. So the guidance for first quarter is slightly less than…

Oh, six to seven, yes. I’d say six to seven or six to eight roughly in that range right now.

Is that an absolute dollar or percentage? Oh, dollars.

Absolute dollar.

Yes. No, sorry. All right. That’s super helpful. And that’s kind of where I had you. So looking at the – I mean, it’s interesting to note that your community broadband was up sequentially in September.

Yes. And it seems, given the magnitude of decline, I mean, regionals already doesn’t have much farther to go to zero. So no, I assume that the primary driver of the decline, kind of has to be community broadband in that regard. And maybe, I don’t know whether it is inventory or pausing in front of BEAD, but I just want to make sure I’m looking at that right, because I know, I mean unless you expect probably go to pretty much…

Yes. There’s a – I’m sorry, go ahead.

No, please.

Yes. What I think absolutely, there’s community broadband in there. But I think one of the things that is important to note on community broadband and a size of the pie that you’re looking at is any, mix from one customer to the next can significantly change from one quarter to the next. And so, it’s important to look at the overall business as a trend line and not as a single quarter. And so it’s more of a standpoint if we put – kind of if we put community broadband into the last six months then large regional carrier in the last six months to get a better picture. I mean, the community broadband space tends to be much most of the [indiscernible] are in the space between the Dakotas and Texas. And so certainly weather affects that space much more than we might see some of our cable providers who are more on the coast. But I wouldn’t indicate it from a market trend standpoint. I think, much more seasonal based than it is market trend based.

Yes, that makes sense. And in terms of kind of the flip side or the positive side of seasonality, it sounds like you might expect that into heading into the calendar second quarter of next year. And Dan, it seems like, I know your gross margins are dipping down looks like in the, maybe low to mid-teens here with the under absorption, but is it reasonable to look at a – kind of a break even revenue levels somewhere in the $50 million quarter range plus or minus, depending on how gross margins are at?

Yes, I’d put that around the – somewhere around the $50 million mark, and some of it’ll be product mix pricing and everything like that, but that’s – you’re not too far off. It could be slightly lower than your $55 million and so on.

Got it. And Cheri, as we go through, I mean, it seems like this BEAD process is happening pretty much in real time with the initial proposals having been submitted by the states and that unlocking some funding. And Cheri, you may have commented this already, I came on late, but, do you think we’re in a position when it warms up to also have the BEAD process warming up, or should that be a little bit behind the seasonality?

I think BEAD is going to be behind the seasonality because we’re – I think we’ll start to see engineering companies get their money, but like I talked about in regard to the shovel ready initiatives, at best case we’re six months behind engineering for shovel ready. And the engineering dollars will start next summer. So it’ll be a seasonal warming for us. And then the BEAD numbers should come behind that and help us then over the course of the winter. As a result, I think the recovery is going to be messy. And messy not in a bad way, just in a way in which it’s going to be difficult to probably see some of the leading indicators from the generalized marketplace because you’re going to have so many competing data points on it. But the recovery will absolutely come into play. It’s just a matter of timing.

Got it. Thanks very much.

Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Cheri for closing comments.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. This is an amazing time in the marketplace. As I talked about earlier, the pendulum swing from demand that appeared insatiable to demand today, which is much more measured and unpredictable. But Clearfield over the last 15 years has been, I think a leader in execution. This is a company that is pragmatic, prudent, and strategic in our outlook and we could not be more disciplined to what we are looking to make happen. As we outlined in the materials, there is more market in front of us than we have behind us. And more importantly, the market that is in front of us is our market, the rural market, the underserved market, and the place in which Clearfield was designed and built to fulfill. And so we are patient, but we are also in a standpoint of being tenacious. And we look forward to delivering shareholder value in the future.

This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.