NETGEAR, INC. — Call Transcript 2025

All right. We'll go ahead and get going. Thank you so much, and thanks, everybody, for joining. I'm Adam Tindle, and this is part of my connected devices coverage here at Raymond James. Very happy to have the team from Netgear here today. We're going to do a fireside chat, just try to keep it fairly light and open. If you do have questions, please feel free to raise your hand and keep it as interactive as possible. But with me today is CJ Prober, CEO, and Bryan Murray, CFO. So we'll just go ahead and dive right in, guys. Thanks for being here. Many of us are familiar with Netgear from a customer standpoint. I'm a happy customer. But for those not as familiar, maybe just give us a little bit of background on the company and how it's evolved over time. Yeah, good question. So we're actually approaching Netgear's 30-year anniversary. Wow. So we've been around for a while. It was a spin-out from Bay Networks. I guess that means back in 1996. And if you were to ask nine people or ten people on the street, you know Netgear, you'd get nine or ten of them would say, absolutely. You know, I've used the products, love the products. But with, you know, we've had a, prior to me joining, we had a single CEO for a 28-year period and have been a very consumer-centric company. And so I think the big news of late is we're driving a very significant transformation of the business. And a big part of that is elevating the enterprise part of our business. So if you look at our business today, about half of our revenue is from the enterprise side of things. Last quarter, that business did about 50% gross margin, 25-ish% contribution margin, and grew 16% year over year. So it's something that we're really excited about elevating, at least to equal footing, to our legacy consumer business, which we're also very proud of and have big expectations for over the long term. And so we just had, since the transformation kicked off about 20 months ago, we just had our first Investor Day a few weeks ago and really outlined a lot about kind of the markets we play in, our strategies for winning in those markets, and some mid and long-range targets. So encourage folks to go and check that out if they haven't yet. Anything, Bryan, that you want to highlight from the Investor Day? Just kind of CliffsNotes or what stood out to you? You've done a number of these over the years, so. Yeah. Well, first off, I'd say it was great participation, probably the biggest audience that we've had in quite some time, and people coming in with different perspectives on Netgear and where we're at in our journey. Selfishly, I think the ability to portray mid-term and long-term targets, financial profiles of both the businesses and the combined performance, I think was a good step for us. We've been in this foundational groundwork to level set things within the transformational effort thus far, but being able to say where we're going, I think, was a big step forward. Yep, agreed. CJ, how would you describe Netgear's competitive advantage and how has the competitive environment changed over the recent years, especially in the enterprise side? I think that's maybe not as well understood. Yeah, great question. So thinking the best way to approach answering that, I would say when you think about what's made Netgear successful up until today, I think the assets that we bring to the table are underappreciated. When you think about our supply chain, our global distribution footprint, people love Netgear because we build incredible devices that perform incredibly well, last forever. I just had a friend of mine text me yesterday saying, "Hey, I'm ready to upgrade my Netgear product that I've had for 10 years." So that legacy capability is something that we value and that we're not moving away from. However, to compete and be more contemporary in both consumer and enterprise, we really need to differentiate via software. And so that's probably the biggest part of the transformation, aside from elevating enterprise, is we're insourcing our software development capability. Historically, that's been outsourced to many, many different vendors. And we're doing that at a time when, with AI, it's easy to onboard the source code. It's easy to get significant productivity. So it's a cost-neutral move, but we get more efficient, better delivery. And so we're differentiating via software. I think that's the biggest change in our competitive differentiation. And if you think about, we have several different business categories, and Pro AV is a great example where we have delivered on that differentiation via software. And what we've done is we've used our software to integrate the AV endpoints of over 500 manufacturing partners so that when a system integrator goes to deploy an AV network, we've done all the hard work for them. And as you see from the Investor Day, one of our partners has said that it's 90% less time to deploy Netgear in an AV network than it is some of our legacy providers. So it's all about software. And like I said, we're not leaving behind what's gotten us here. Yep. One of the other competitors, more on the consumer side of the house, is TP-Link, and it's obviously become very topical with investors. Maybe just talk about the different cases against TP-Link, where we're sitting in that process, and the amount of incremental investment you'd expect if perhaps that company gets banned. Yeah. We get a lot of questions about TP-Link, and our approach in responding to that has really been to quote the very reputable press sources, because we're reading the same stuff that others are reading, but we pay close attention to it. So if you look at, I'm not sure the cases you might be referring to, but in the end of October, Washington Post published an article that noted that the Commerce Department was finalizing an initial determination that would have the implications of banning TP-Link, and that initial determination work was supported by six federal agencies. More recently, in fact, last week, Bloomberg published an article that said the FTC was investigating TP-Link and in the early stages of doing that for potentially misleading customers, and so what we see is the media coverage and the momentum on this gaining. We just think it's a matter of time before something happens there. Okay. We'll stay tuned. On the enterprise side, and I just want to maybe spend a little bit of time over there because it's become a key part of the investment thesis, I think. You've made a lot of changes to the business since joining. I know you talked about some of the software stuff you did, but just talk about some of the personnel changes that you've brought in and how you might expect that to impact future performance. Yeah, great question. So we've had a significant evolution of the leadership team. So I think when I joined, there was about 13 exec team members. Two of those remained. So a lot of the team has been brought in from the outside, a mix of people I've worked with in the past and new folks. And then we've elevated some really high potential leaders from within the company. And I guess the most significant DNA injection that's occurred as part of the transformation is bringing in true enterprise networking expertise. So Pramod Badjate, who presented our Investor Day, he is a long-term enterprise networking leader. He led Ruckus. He led campus Wi-Fi for Arista. He was a long-time Cisco engineering leader. He's built out a team of similarly experienced, very capable leaders. Eric Law is our commercial leader. He was the former head of sales globally for Ruckus. And so by creating this BU structure that has consumer led by Jonathan Oakes, who's actually one of the newer members of the exec team, also incredibly capable, coming from Fitbit and Google and Amazon. But we've got the BU structure that allows us to bring in the right talent to focus on building and scaling each of these businesses. And on the enterprise side, maybe just talk about the key competitors and the various aspects in Netgear's differentiation. And I think when you answer this, sometimes you talk about the health of the financial profile of the business. So if you want to maybe tie that in, the gross margins out there in enterprise. Yeah, great question. So we really have two main business segments in enterprise. We've got Pro AV and we've got enterprise networking and security. On the Pro AV side, we've really. This is like a $3 billion market for IP-based switching equipment that's growing. It's estimated to be about 14% over the next five years. So it's a smallish market for the big players, but it's a really interesting market for us. Our growth has been outpacing that market CAGR. And so when you look at the competition there, it's much bigger kind of traditional networking players that have massive businesses that are squarely focused on the data center opportunity, the security opportunity. And so by having made this early investment and really leaning into the AV community and building out the ecosystem that I described, that's allowed us to be ultra competitive. It's not just about the affordability of our device and software solutions. It's the point I made about it's 90% less time to deploy Netgear. So it's a huge savings for end customers. And then on the enterprise networking and security side of things, we see the small to medium enterprises as being underserved because what they're having to do is deploy very expensive solutions from bigger enterprise networking and security companies that have significant margins relative to ours. And so that margin we view as our opportunity. Now, of course, there's an opportunity for us to introduce more recurring revenue and support and professional services along the way, but we still see a big gap in the market in terms of providing affordable, reliable, and purpose-built solutions for that SME customer in the education, retail, and hospitality and MDU vertical. And so the competitive set there is pretty obvious, but they also similarly are focused on the big enterprise customers where we can come in and command and really solve a customer's problem in a purpose-built way. Got it. This might be one for Bryan. Just, I know Pro AV in particular, but broadly speaking, the business has faced some supply constraints and component issues that are obviously not within your control per se, but just maybe summarize what's going on for supply constraints and how that maybe resolves itself going forward. Sure. I'll start with the AV product line, which we've been talking most of this year about supply availability and chasing supply. Demand is outpacing. And part of that was self-inflicted. We had gotten a little conservative with our forecast there at the end of 2023. And with lead times, this is our longest lead time product. It's over a year for the main chipset. And so to catch up has taken us quite some time. And all along, the demand continues to outpace our expectations. So we're continuing to chase. The good news is we made progress in the third quarter in building up some supply there. We're not all the way there. We're going to make some additional progress in Q4. And we think by Q1 timeframe, we should be in a place where we have not only the level of supply needed for that quarter, but we'll enter the second quarter with some buffer stock to really capture the full market opportunity there. There are other things going on within the supply chain, and I'm sure everybody in here has been hearing a lot about memory pricing in the market, something that we're now facing. We noted in our Q4 guidance, it's about 150 basis point headwind to our gross margins. This has been an issue that's been going on most of this year, and we've been able to mitigate it up until Q4 timeframe. We ask our supply chain to kind of manage that and absorb those costs, but we're now in the place where we are participating in some of that increase. The good news is there are other things that are going on. We talked about our Investor Day that we are insourcing the managed switch OS, and so we're bringing that in-house. We'll have to invest some R&D resources to help develop features and maintain that code, but it is going to be a benefit to our gross margins in that 100-150 basis points range. So we're kind of offsetting some of those things. I would say on the memory side of things, we're investing a lot of time looking SKU by SKU to optimize our products and redesign in some cases to use portions of the memory market, like a 1 gig memory component that is a little more accessible and not seeing the surge pricing that other areas would be seeing. So where we can optimize, we're doing that right now. Do you think the 150 basis points in Q4 is kind of reflective of the current environment, or would there be additional that would potentially spill into 2026? I think as of right now, the 150 is about the impact to our gross margins with the current market environment. Hopefully, as we get into later next year, obviously with the big players in the DDR4 space exiting, there is opportunity for other people to pick up capacity, but how quickly that ramps is to be seen. Yep. Okay, that's helpful. I want to shift gears into the consumer side of the house, CJ. We're here in New York, almost Christmas time. Probably a festive question to ask how consumer behavior is this holiday season versus last? Yeah, it's interesting. You read a lot about consumer confidence challenges and inflationary impacts. We haven't seen that. We've to date had a really good holiday period. We're meeting expectations, maybe surpassing them a little bit. And one thing that I would attribute that to, you'll recall when we were here last year, we talked about moving back into good, better, best for our routing category, for our mesh category. That allows us to participate in the key buying events much more fully and aggressively. And when you do that, there's a halo effect outside of the Cyber Monday, the Black Friday, and the weeks around that. And so our execution there has improved, but we're seeing pretty resilient consumer behavior at the moment. Got it. And then any changes from the way that the channel is managing? I mean, there's been periods of time where they want to own more or less inventory and stock and weeks of channel inventory. How would you describe maybe your interactions with your big go-to-market partners? Yeah, we haven't seen a big shift of late in terms of that. That was a big push coming out of COVID. Everybody had a lot of inventory. That led to the big reset we did in Q2 of 2024 that allowed our partners to aggressively move down their inventory position. Whenever you have that excess, it's a very costly endeavor, so we're living by our philosophy of matching sell-in to sell-through whenever we can, and we just haven't seen a big behavior change from partners in either direction. Okay, great. And we've got a new Wi-Fi standard, Wi-Fi 8. I think we've gone through these various cycles and maybe become a little bit numb to what they mean going forward. Maybe just kind of summarize what Wi-Fi 8 is versus 7 and what the opportunity that might bring. Yeah. So it has both an industry and technology impact, and then it's super relevant to Netgear, and I'll explain why. From an industry technology perspective, the days of incrementing Wi-Fi by improving throughput are largely behind us. Wi-Fi 7 has incredible throughput. Wi-Fi 8 is much more about lower latency, higher reliability, like a step change function. And so we're actually, when you think about, Jonathan shared a lot more on this at the Investor Day, but when you think about connectivity in the home and the problems that persist there, it's not a throughput problem. It's about reliability. It's about latency. And so we're excited about the potential that Wi-Fi 8, along with AI, bring to the table to truly take us forward in solving connectivity in the home. And as we shared, similar to the way we think about Pro AV, it's very important for us, for our in-home partners, for us to work together with them to solve connectivity in the home. Together, we announced the Google partnership at Investor Day. From a Netgear perspective, it's relevant because when I joined, Jonathan hadn't started, Wi-Fi 7 products were coming to market. We quickly changed the nature of our roadmap to good, better, best, as I said before. Wi-Fi 8 is really our first opportunity to change our product portfolio to align with Jonathan's vision for how we're going to solve connectivity in the home. So it's very relevant to us from that perspective as well. So we're really excited about it. And maybe talk about the subscription opportunity on the consumer side. We've heard about that for years for Netgear, and things like Armor made some sense, but you also spent some time at Analyst Day talking about this, and just would be helpful to recap how you're thinking about consumer subscription in particular. Yeah. So long term, we see a real opportunity to scale that part of our business. There's a top-of-funnel challenge that we're addressing by moving away from just the premium segment. Then there's a number of subscription fundamentals that we're in the process of addressing. I've talked about this ties into Wi-Fi 8 as well, like debundling our subscription offer from our device offerings because we've largely connected the two, and that makes it harder to drive new subscribers and true recurring revenue. But at the foundation of our subscription today, it's really cybersecurity, which makes a ton of sense because networking in the home is kind of your digital front door. And by upgrading with our subscription product, which we call Armor today, it really enhances that peace of mind that you get as a household. It also comes with. We partner with Bitdefender in offering that. So the value that Bitdefender provides on a standalone basis is bundled. So you get all of the routing mesh endpoint in the home protection, and then you get the protection you would otherwise get with Bitdefender. So it's a really great value. And over time, again, as we truly solve connectivity in the home, we see opportunities to add value for consumers and grow that. So we've got about 36 million of ARR on the consumer side of the business today, and we're excited about growing that. Great. Just rounding out this side, the service provider piece has undergone some changes, and I think you're doing some things to make that business make more sense going forward and optimize it. Maybe just recap some of the changes that you've made and kind of the outlook for that piece of the business going forward? Yeah. I think it's important to I think people tend to sometimes confuse a few different things there. So we have service provider where today we largely sell our mobile hotspots into carrier partners like AT&T. We have our cable products that are sold at retail, but those only work if you're connected to a cable ISP like a Comcast or a Spectrum. And then we have just 5G products more generally. On the first, that's been a challenge business. We said at Analyst Day that's declined year to date about 20%. We're still going to make great products for our service provider customers so that we can leverage that technology investments in other parts of the business. But we have said that we don't expect that to be a growth business. And in fact, we're going to put it to we've said the opposite. We think that's going to continue to decline, and we're going to carve it out so investors can see that business going forward. The cable products is in a similar boat. It's more and more ISPs are making it difficult to attach a third-party cable product like ours to their networks. So that's been a declining market, and we're going to continue to harvest that. Consumers value our products. We're going to continue to support them, but we don't expect that to be a growth business. Our 5G products are very strategic on both the consumer and enterprise side because if you think about Pramod's portfolio of enterprise networking and security, a lot of those customers today are using our mobile hotspots for primary connectivity, for enterprise failover, and we don't make that easy. We don't have the right level of integration. We don't have the right form factor. On the consumer side, people use our mobile hotspots for failover at home. Similarly, it's not properly integrated to our Orbi mesh systems or our Nighthawk platforms. So we see those 5G technology and development capabilities we have are strategic and something that we plan to continue to invest in specifically to solve problems for consumers in each of those segments. So we've so far talked about you started with the enterprise side. We've talked about the consumer side. How do you think about the synergy between consumer and enterprise, and when would it potentially make sense to keep them together or let them operate separately? Have you thought about those things? Yeah, they're definitely different businesses, different end customers. We get a lot of synergies from the investments we make in operations like our supply chain, G&A, central marketing. So there is value in having the businesses together because we get leverage from those parts of the business. If you think about the transformation roadmap we outlined at Investor Day, we're largely exiting phase one, which is getting the foundation set. Phase two, which we described as like a 2026 to 2028 effort, that's really about strengthening the core businesses because today that gives us optionality, whether it's to grow more aggressively on an inorganic basis. Once we build value back into Netgear, we have optionality for where we take both businesses. But today, we have a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of improving the performance of the businesses, and they're both subscale. So our focus is on growth and enhancing the P&L for each of them, and then the rest will take care of itself. Got it. Bryan, I wanted to ask a couple of balance sheet and cash flow questions. Maybe just starting out with cash flow, you've obviously had some healthy free cash generation. You've got a very clean balance sheet. Maybe just recap where you're at from a cash position and how you're thinking about sort of sustainable levels of free cash flow going forward. Yeah. So if I look back to the start of 2024, we were sitting about $285 million in cash, and today we have $326 million, which is net of some healthy level of stock repurchase that we've been doing. So we've repurchased $69 million over that timeframe. We've also completed a couple of acquisitions. So we've been able to deploy capital strategically and return capital to shareholders over that time and still sitting on a pretty healthy cash balance. We continue to believe we need about $125-$150 million to operate. So we have some extra cash there. And in terms of free cash flow generation, we aren't very capital intensive. We would expect to convert cash at a rate of 85%-100% of non-GAAP net income. And you talk about having excess cash. Maybe talk about capital allocation priorities. What's the right mix of the various options that you have? Yeah, we continue to talk about it. It's a three-pronged approach. We're obviously going to fund the investments in the organic business. We've talked at length about that. On the enterprise side, we have go-to-market gaps that we're filling. We're insourcing software development. There's other things with regards to R&D. So we'll fund those investments to drive long-term value creation. We also will look at M&A opportunities, things that are product adjacencies or capability gaps. And then lastly is return of capital to shareholders. We've been, as I said earlier, active repurchases of our stock, 3.4 million shares over that seven-quarter timeframe, an average cost of $19.99. So we deploy capital in all three of those phases. Yeah. Time for one question before we wrap. Anything pressing out there? Yep. What could a TP-Link ban look like? Would it be critical infrastructure, legal, healthcare, finance, or would it be every scenario? Yeah, we can only really comment on what we've read. And I would say it's hard to read between the lines of how that would manifest itself in a specific action. There's a very broad range of things that could happen there, everything from scope of products that are included and then the speed and timing of an action. So it's a little bit ambiguous at the moment. But you've also talked about kind of like the state of the market, and I think they're currently number one market share. Is that right? Yeah. On the retail side, from a unit perspective, the data that we look at shows them as a significant market leader. And also they lead from a market share perspective on a revenue basis. Yeah. Makes sense. Well, let's wrap it up. I guess what's the key message if you wanted to kind of boil down the story to an investor who's maybe revisiting the story or newer to it? What would you like them to walk away with today as they think about Netgear? Yeah. So we are executing on a very bold and significant transformation. The first couple of years or so have gone really great, but we're actually even more excited about what's to come. And so we'd really, for those who think they understand what Netgear is about, I would encourage them to go and watch our Investor Day because we really outline in a lot of detail where we're playing, how we're going to win, what the size of those markets are, what do we think the financial profile of the business looks like in the mid and the long term, and we're fired up about it. Sounds great. CJ, Bryan, thank you so much. Thanks, Adam.

Speaker 4: All right. We'll go ahead and get going. Thank you so much, and thanks, everybody, for joining. I'm Adam Tindle, and this is part of my connected devices coverage here at Raymond James. Very happy to have the team from Netgear here today. We're going to do a fireside chat, just try to keep it fairly light and open. If you do have questions, please feel free to raise your hand and keep it as interactive as possible. But with me today is CJ Prober, CEO, and Bryan Murray, CFO. So we'll just go ahead and dive right in, guys. Thanks for being here. Many of us are familiar with Netgear from a customer standpoint. I'm a happy customer. But for those not as familiar, maybe just give us a little bit of background on the company and how it's evolved over time. All right. all right We'll go ahead and get going. we'll go ahead and get going Thank you so much, and thanks, everybody, for joining. thank you so much and thanks everybody for joining I'm Adam Tindle, and this is part of my connected devices coverage here at Raymond James. i'm adam tindle and this is part of my connected devices coverage here at raymond james Very happy to have the team from Netgear here today. very happy to have the team from netgear here today We're going to do a fireside chat, just try to keep it fairly light and open. we're going to do a fireside chat just try to keep it fairly light and open If you do have questions, please feel free to raise your hand and keep it as interactive as possible. if you do have questions please feel free to raise your hand and keep it as interactive as possible But with me today is CJ Prober, CEO, and Bryan Murray, CFO. but with me today is cj prober ceo and bryan murray cfo So we'll just go ahead and dive right in, guys. so we'll just go ahead and dive right in guys Thanks for being here. thanks for being here Many of us are familiar with Netgear from a customer standpoint. many of us are familiar with netgear from a customer standpoint I'm a happy customer. i'm a happy customer But for those not as familiar, maybe just give us a little bit of background on the company and how it's evolved over time. but for those not as familiar maybe just give us a little bit of background on the company and how it's evolved over time

Speaker 3: Yeah, good question. So we're actually approaching Netgear's 30-year anniversary. Yeah, good question. yeah good question So we're actually approaching Netgear's 30-year anniversary. so we're actually approaching netgear's 30-year anniversary

Speaker 4: Wow. Wow. wow

Speaker 3: So we've been around for a while. It was a spin-out from Bay Networks. I guess that means back in 1996. And if you were to ask nine people or ten people on the street, you know Netgear, you'd get nine or ten of them would say, absolutely. You know, I've used the products, love the products. But with, you know, we've had a, prior to me joining, we had a single CEO for a 28-year period and have been a very consumer-centric company. And so I think the big news of late is we're driving a very significant transformation of the business. And a big part of that is elevating the enterprise part of our business. So if you look at our business today, about half of our revenue is from the enterprise side of things. So we've been around for a while. so we've been around for a while It was a spin-out from Bay Networks. it was a spin-out from bay networks I guess that means back in 1996. i guess that means back in 1996 And if you were to ask nine people or ten people on the street, you know Netgear, you'd get nine or ten of them would say, absolutely. and if you were to ask nine people or ten people on the street you know netgear you'd get nine or ten of them would say absolutely You know, I've used the products, love the products. you know i've used the products love the products But with, you know, we've had a, prior to me joining, we had a single CEO for a 28-year period and have been a very consumer-centric company. but with you know we've had a prior to me joining we had a single ceo for a 28-year period and have been a very consumer-centric company And so I think the big news of late is we're driving a very significant transformation of the business. and so i think the big news of late is we're driving a very significant transformation of the business And a big part of that is elevating the enterprise part of our business. and a big part of that is elevating the enterprise part of our business So if you look at our business today, about half of our revenue is from the enterprise side of things. so if you look at our business today about half of our revenue is from the enterprise side of things Last quarter, that business did about 50% gross margin, 25-ish% contribution margin, and grew 16% year over year. So it's something that we're really excited about elevating, at least to equal footing, to our legacy consumer business, which we're also very proud of and have big expectations for over the long term. And so we just had, since the transformation kicked off about 20 months ago, we just had our first Investor Day a few weeks ago and really outlined a lot about kind of the markets we play in, our strategies for winning in those markets, and some mid and long-range targets. So encourage folks to go and check that out if they haven't yet. Last quarter, that business did about 50% gross margin, 25-ish% contribution margin, and grew 16% year over year. last quarter that business did about 50% gross margin 25-ish% contribution margin and grew 16% year over year So it's something that we're really excited about elevating, at least to equal footing, to our legacy consumer business, which we're also very proud of and have big expectations for over the long term. so it's something that we're really excited about elevating at least to equal footing to our legacy consumer business which we're also very proud of and have big expectations for over the long term And so we just had, since the transformation kicked off about 20 months ago, we just had our first Investor Day a few weeks ago and really outlined a lot about kind of the markets we play in, our strategies for winning in those markets, and some mid and long-range targets. and so we just had since the transformation kicked off about 20 months ago we just had our first investor day a few weeks ago and really outlined a lot about kind of the markets we play in our strategies for winning in those markets and some mid and long-range targets So encourage folks to go and check that out if they haven't yet. so encourage folks to go and check that out if they haven't yet

Speaker 4: Anything, Bryan, that you want to highlight from the Investor Day? Just kind of CliffsNotes or what stood out to you? You've done a number of these over the years, so. Anything, Bryan, that you want to highlight from the Investor Day? anything bryan that you want to highlight from the investor day Just kind of CliffsNotes or what stood out to you? just kind of cliffsnotes or what stood out to you You've done a number of these over the years, so. you've done a number of these over the years so

Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, first off, I'd say it was great participation, probably the biggest audience that we've had in quite some time, and people coming in with different perspectives on Netgear and where we're at in our journey. Selfishly, I think the ability to portray mid-term and long-term targets, financial profiles of both the businesses and the combined performance, I think was a good step for us. We've been in this foundational groundwork to level set things within the transformational effort thus far, but being able to say where we're going, I think, was a big step forward. Yeah. yeah Well, first off, I'd say it was great participation, probably the biggest audience that we've had in quite some time, and people coming in with different perspectives on Netgear and where we're at in our journey. well first off i'd say it was great participation probably the biggest audience that we've had in quite some time and people coming in with different perspectives on netgear and where we're at in our journey Selfishly, I think the ability to portray mid-term and long-term targets, financial profiles of both the businesses and the combined performance, I think was a good step for us. selfishly i think the ability to portray mid-term and long-term targets financial profiles of both the businesses and the combined performance i think was a good step for us We've been in this foundational groundwork to level set things within the transformational effort thus far, but being able to say where we're going, I think, was a big step forward. we've been in this foundational groundwork to level set things within the transformational effort thus far but being able to say where we're going i think was a big step forward

Speaker 4: Yep, agreed. CJ, how would you describe Netgear's competitive advantage and how has the competitive environment changed over the recent years, especially in the enterprise side? I think that's maybe not as well understood. Yep, agreed. yep agreed CJ, how would you describe Netgear's competitive advantage and how has the competitive environment changed over the recent years, especially in the enterprise side? cj how would you describe netgear's competitive advantage and how has the competitive environment changed over the recent years especially in the enterprise side I think that's maybe not as well understood. i think that's maybe not as well understood

Speaker 3: Yeah, great question. So thinking the best way to approach answering that, I would say when you think about what's made Netgear successful up until today, I think the assets that we bring to the table are underappreciated. When you think about our supply chain, our global distribution footprint, people love Netgear because we build incredible devices that perform incredibly well, last forever. I just had a friend of mine text me yesterday saying, "Hey, I'm ready to upgrade my Netgear product that I've had for 10 years." So that legacy capability is something that we value and that we're not moving away from. However, to compete and be more contemporary in both consumer and enterprise, we really need to differentiate via software. And so that's probably the biggest part of the transformation, aside from elevating enterprise, is we're insourcing our software development capability. Yeah, great question. yeah great question So thinking the best way to approach answering that, I would say when you think about what's made Netgear successful up until today, I think the assets that we bring to the table are underappreciated. so thinking the best way to approach answering that i would say when you think about what's made netgear successful up until today i think the assets that we bring to the table are underappreciated When you think about our supply chain, our global distribution footprint, people love Netgear because we build incredible devices that perform incredibly well, last forever. when you think about our supply chain our global distribution footprint people love netgear because we build incredible devices that perform incredibly well last forever I just had a friend of mine text me yesterday saying, "Hey, I'm ready to upgrade my Netgear product that I've had for 10 years." So that legacy capability is something that we value and that we're not moving away from. i just had a friend of mine text me yesterday saying "hey i'm ready to upgrade my netgear product that i've had for 10 years." so that legacy capability is something that we value and that we're not moving away from However, to compete and be more contemporary in both consumer and enterprise, we really need to differentiate via software. however to compete and be more contemporary in both consumer and enterprise we really need to differentiate via software And so that's probably the biggest part of the transformation, aside from elevating enterprise, is we're insourcing our software development capability. and so that's probably the biggest part of the transformation aside from elevating enterprise is we're insourcing our software development capability Historically, that's been outsourced to many, many different vendors. And we're doing that at a time when, with AI, it's easy to onboard the source code. It's easy to get significant productivity. So it's a cost-neutral move, but we get more efficient, better delivery. And so we're differentiating via software. I think that's the biggest change in our competitive differentiation. And if you think about, we have several different business categories, and Pro AV is a great example where we have delivered on that differentiation via software. And what we've done is we've used our software to integrate the AV endpoints of over 500 manufacturing partners so that when a system integrator goes to deploy an AV network, we've done all the hard work for them. Historically, that's been outsourced to many, many different vendors. historically that's been outsourced to many many different vendors And we're doing that at a time when, with AI, it's easy to onboard the source code. and we're doing that at a time when with ai it's easy to onboard the source code It's easy to get significant productivity. it's easy to get significant productivity So it's a cost-neutral move, but we get more efficient, better delivery. so it's a cost-neutral move but we get more efficient better delivery And so we're differentiating via software. and so we're differentiating via software I think that's the biggest change in our competitive differentiation. i think that's the biggest change in our competitive differentiation And if you think about, we have several different business categories, and Pro AV is a great example where we have delivered on that differentiation via software. and if you think about we have several different business categories and pro av is a great example where we have delivered on that differentiation via software And what we've done is we've used our software to integrate the AV endpoints of over 500 manufacturing partners so that when a system integrator goes to deploy an AV network, we've done all the hard work for them. and what we've done is we've used our software to integrate the av endpoints of over 500 manufacturing partners so that when a system integrator goes to deploy an av network we've done all the hard work for them And as you see from the Investor Day, one of our partners has said that it's 90% less time to deploy Netgear in an AV network than it is some of our legacy providers. So it's all about software. And like I said, we're not leaving behind what's gotten us here. And as you see from the Investor Day, one of our partners has said that it's 90% less time to deploy Netgear in an AV network than it is some of our legacy providers. and as you see from the investor day one of our partners has said that it's 90% less time to deploy netgear in an av network than it is some of our legacy providers So it's all about software. so it's all about software And like I said, we're not leaving behind what's gotten us here. and like i said we're not leaving behind what's gotten us here

Speaker 4: Yep. One of the other competitors, more on the consumer side of the house, is TP-Link, and it's obviously become very topical with investors. Maybe just talk about the different cases against TP-Link, where we're sitting in that process, and the amount of incremental investment you'd expect if perhaps that company gets banned. Yep. yep One of the other competitors, more on the consumer side of the house, is TP-Link, and it's obviously become very topical with investors. one of the other competitors more on the consumer side of the house is tp-link and it's obviously become very topical with investors Maybe just talk about the different cases against TP-Link, where we're sitting in that process, and the amount of incremental investment you'd expect if perhaps that company gets banned. maybe just talk about the different cases against tp-link where we're sitting in that process and the amount of incremental investment you'd expect if perhaps that company gets banned

Speaker 3: Yeah. We get a lot of questions about TP-Link, and our approach in responding to that has really been to quote the very reputable press sources, because we're reading the same stuff that others are reading, but we pay close attention to it. So if you look at, I'm not sure the cases you might be referring to, but in the end of October, Washington Post published an article that noted that the Commerce Department was finalizing an initial determination that would have the implications of banning TP-Link, and that initial determination work was supported by six federal agencies. More recently, in fact, last week, Bloomberg published an article that said the FTC was investigating TP-Link and in the early stages of doing that for potentially misleading customers, and so what we see is the media coverage and the momentum on this gaining. Yeah. yeah We get a lot of questions about TP-Link, and our approach in responding to that has really been to quote the very reputable press sources, because we're reading the same stuff that others are reading, but we pay close attention to it. we get a lot of questions about tp-link and our approach in responding to that has really been to quote the very reputable press sources because we're reading the same stuff that others are reading but we pay close attention to it So if you look at, I'm not sure the cases you might be referring to, but in the end of October, Washington Post published an article that noted that the Commerce Department was finalizing an initial determination that would have the implications of banning TP-Link, and that initial determination work was supported by six federal agencies. so if you look at i'm not sure the cases you might be referring to but in the end of october washington post published an article that noted that the commerce department was finalizing an initial determination that would have the implications of banning tp-link and that initial determination work was supported by six federal agencies More recently, in fact, last week, Bloomberg published an article that said the FTC was investigating TP-Link and in the early stages of doing that for potentially misleading customers, and so what we see is the media coverage and the momentum on this gaining. more recently in fact last week bloomberg published an article that said the ftc was investigating tp-link and in the early stages of doing that for potentially misleading customers and so what we see is the media coverage and the momentum on this gaining We just think it's a matter of time before something happens there. We just think it's a matter of time before something happens there. we just think it's a matter of time before something happens there

Speaker 4: Okay. We'll stay tuned. On the enterprise side, and I just want to maybe spend a little bit of time over there because it's become a key part of the investment thesis, I think. You've made a lot of changes to the business since joining. I know you talked about some of the software stuff you did, but just talk about some of the personnel changes that you've brought in and how you might expect that to impact future performance. Okay. okay We'll stay tuned. we'll stay tuned On the enterprise side, and I just want to maybe spend a little bit of time over there because it's become a key part of the investment thesis, I think. on the enterprise side and i just want to maybe spend a little bit of time over there because it's become a key part of the investment thesis i think You've made a lot of changes to the business since joining. you've made a lot of changes to the business since joining I know you talked about some of the software stuff you did, but just talk about some of the personnel changes that you've brought in and how you might expect that to impact future performance. i know you talked about some of the software stuff you did but just talk about some of the personnel changes that you've brought in and how you might expect that to impact future performance

Speaker 3: Yeah, great question. So we've had a significant evolution of the leadership team. So I think when I joined, there was about 13 exec team members. Two of those remained. So a lot of the team has been brought in from the outside, a mix of people I've worked with in the past and new folks. And then we've elevated some really high potential leaders from within the company. And I guess the most significant DNA injection that's occurred as part of the transformation is bringing in true enterprise networking expertise. So Pramod Badjate, who presented our Investor Day, he is a long-term enterprise networking leader. He led Ruckus. He led campus Wi-Fi for Arista. He was a long-time Cisco engineering leader. He's built out a team of similarly experienced, very capable leaders. Eric Law is our commercial leader. He was the former head of sales globally for Ruckus. Yeah, great question. yeah great question So we've had a significant evolution of the leadership team. so we've had a significant evolution of the leadership team So I think when I joined, there was about 13 exec team members. so i think when i joined there was about 13 exec team members Two of those remained. two of those remained So a lot of the team has been brought in from the outside, a mix of people I've worked with in the past and new folks. so a lot of the team has been brought in from the outside a mix of people i've worked with in the past and new folks And then we've elevated some really high potential leaders from within the company. and then we've elevated some really high potential leaders from within the company And I guess the most significant DNA injection that's occurred as part of the transformation is bringing in true enterprise networking expertise. and i guess the most significant dna injection that's occurred as part of the transformation is bringing in true enterprise networking expertise So Pramod Badjate, who presented our Investor Day, he is a long-term enterprise networking leader. so pramod badjate who presented our investor day he is a long-term enterprise networking leader He led Ruckus. he led ruckus He led campus Wi-Fi for Arista. he led campus wi-fi for arista He was a long-time Cisco engineering leader. he was a long-time cisco engineering leader He's built out a team of similarly experienced, very capable leaders. he's built out a team of similarly experienced very capable leaders Eric Law is our commercial leader. eric law is our commercial leader He was the former head of sales globally for Ruckus. he was the former head of sales globally for ruckus And so by creating this BU structure that has consumer led by Jonathan Oakes, who's actually one of the newer members of the exec team, also incredibly capable, coming from Fitbit and Google and Amazon. But we've got the BU structure that allows us to bring in the right talent to focus on building and scaling each of these businesses. And so by creating this BU structure that has consumer led by Jonathan Oakes, who's actually one of the newer members of the exec team, also incredibly capable, coming from Fitbit and Google and Amazon. and so by creating this bu structure that has consumer led by jonathan oakes who's actually one of the newer members of the exec team also incredibly capable coming from fitbit and google and amazon But we've got the BU structure that allows us to bring in the right talent to focus on building and scaling each of these businesses. but we've got the bu structure that allows us to bring in the right talent to focus on building and scaling each of these businesses

Speaker 4: And on the enterprise side, maybe just talk about the key competitors and the various aspects in Netgear's differentiation. And I think when you answer this, sometimes you talk about the health of the financial profile of the business. So if you want to maybe tie that in, the gross margins out there in enterprise. And on the enterprise side, maybe just talk about the key competitors and the various aspects in Netgear's differentiation. and on the enterprise side maybe just talk about the key competitors and the various aspects in netgear's differentiation And I think when you answer this, sometimes you talk about the health of the financial profile of the business. and i think when you answer this sometimes you talk about the health of the financial profile of the business So if you want to maybe tie that in, the gross margins out there in enterprise. so if you want to maybe tie that in the gross margins out there in enterprise

Speaker 3: Yeah, great question. So we really have two main business segments in enterprise. We've got Pro AV and we've got enterprise networking and security. On the Pro AV side, we've really. This is like a $3 billion market for IP-based switching equipment that's growing. It's estimated to be about 14% over the next five years. So it's a smallish market for the big players, but it's a really interesting market for us. Our growth has been outpacing that market CAGR. And so when you look at the competition there, it's much bigger kind of traditional networking players that have massive businesses that are squarely focused on the data center opportunity, the security opportunity. And so by having made this early investment and really leaning into the AV community and building out the ecosystem that I described, that's allowed us to be ultra competitive. Yeah, great question. yeah great question So we really have two main business segments in enterprise. so we really have two main business segments in enterprise We've got Pro AV and we've got enterprise networking and security. we've got pro av and we've got enterprise networking and security On the Pro AV side, we've really. on the pro av side we've really this This is like a $3 billion market for IP-based switching equipment that's growing. really this is like a $3 billion market for ip-based switching equipment that's growing It's estimated to be about 14% over the next five years. it's estimated to be about 14% over the next five years So it's a smallish market for the big players, but it's a really interesting market for us. so it's a smallish market for the big players but it's a really interesting market for us Our growth has been outpacing that market CAGR. our growth has been outpacing that market cagr And so when you look at the competition there, it's much bigger kind of traditional networking players that have massive businesses that are squarely focused on the data center opportunity, the security opportunity. and so when you look at the competition there it's much bigger kind of traditional networking players that have massive businesses that are squarely focused on the data center opportunity the security opportunity And so by having made this early investment and really leaning into the AV community and building out the ecosystem that I described, that's allowed us to be ultra competitive. and so by having made this early investment and really leaning into the av community and building out the ecosystem that i described that's allowed us to be ultra competitive It's not just about the affordability of our device and software solutions. It's the point I made about it's 90% less time to deploy Netgear. So it's a huge savings for end customers. And then on the enterprise networking and security side of things, we see the small to medium enterprises as being underserved because what they're having to do is deploy very expensive solutions from bigger enterprise networking and security companies that have significant margins relative to ours. And so that margin we view as our opportunity. Now, of course, there's an opportunity for us to introduce more recurring revenue and support and professional services along the way, but we still see a big gap in the market in terms of providing affordable, reliable, and purpose-built solutions for that SME customer in the education, retail, and hospitality and MDU vertical. It's not just about the affordability of our device and software solutions. it's not just about the affordability of our device and software solutions It's the point I made about it's 90% less time to deploy Netgear. it's the point i made about it's 90% less time to deploy netgear So it's a huge savings for end customers. so it's a huge savings for end customers And then on the enterprise networking and security side of things, we see the small to medium enterprises as being underserved because what they're having to do is deploy very expensive solutions from bigger enterprise networking and security companies that have significant margins relative to ours. and then on the enterprise networking and security side of things we see the small to medium enterprises as being underserved because what they're having to do is deploy very expensive solutions from bigger enterprise networking and security companies that have significant margins relative to ours And so that margin we view as our opportunity. and so that margin we view as our opportunity Now, of course, there's an opportunity for us to introduce more recurring revenue and support and professional services along the way, but we still see a big gap in the market in terms of providing affordable, reliable, and purpose-built solutions for that SME customer in the education, retail, and hospitality and MDU vertical. now of course there's an opportunity for us to introduce more recurring revenue and support and professional services along the way but we still see a big gap in the market in terms of providing affordable reliable and purpose-built solutions for that sme customer in the education retail and hospitality and mdu vertical And so the competitive set there is pretty obvious, but they also similarly are focused on the big enterprise customers where we can come in and command and really solve a customer's problem in a purpose-built way. And so the competitive set there is pretty obvious, but they also similarly are focused on the big enterprise customers where we can come in and command and really solve a customer's problem in a purpose-built way. and so the competitive set there is pretty obvious but they also similarly are focused on the big enterprise customers where we can come in and command and really solve a customer's problem in a purpose-built way

Speaker 4: Got it. This might be one for Bryan. Just, I know Pro AV in particular, but broadly speaking, the business has faced some supply constraints and component issues that are obviously not within your control per se, but just maybe summarize what's going on for supply constraints and how that maybe resolves itself going forward. Got it. got it This might be one for Bryan. this might be one for bryan Just, I know Pro AV in particular, but broadly speaking, the business has faced some supply constraints and component issues that are obviously not within your control per se, but just maybe summarize what's going on for supply constraints and how that maybe resolves itself going forward. just i know pro av in particular but broadly speaking the business has faced some supply constraints and component issues that are obviously not within your control per se but just maybe summarize what's going on for supply constraints and how that maybe resolves itself going forward

Speaker 1: Sure. I'll start with the AV product line, which we've been talking most of this year about supply availability and chasing supply. Demand is outpacing. And part of that was self-inflicted. We had gotten a little conservative with our forecast there at the end of 2023. And with lead times, this is our longest lead time product. It's over a year for the main chipset. And so to catch up has taken us quite some time. And all along, the demand continues to outpace our expectations. So we're continuing to chase. The good news is we made progress in the third quarter in building up some supply there. We're not all the way there. We're going to make some additional progress in Q4. Sure. sure I'll start with the AV product line, which we've been talking most of this year about supply availability and chasing supply. i'll start with the av product line which we've been talking most of this year about supply availability and chasing supply Demand is outpacing. demand is outpacing And part of that was self-inflicted. and part of that was self-inflicted We had gotten a little conservative with our forecast there at the end of 2023. we had gotten a little conservative with our forecast there at the end of 2023 And with lead times, this is our longest lead time product. and with lead times this is our longest lead time product It's over a year for the main chipset. it's over a year for the main chipset And so to catch up has taken us quite some time. and so to catch up has taken us quite some time And all along, the demand continues to outpace our expectations. and all along the demand continues to outpace our expectations So we're continuing to chase. so we're continuing to chase The good news is we made progress in the third quarter in building up some supply there. the good news is we made progress in the third quarter in building up some supply there We're not all the way there. we're not all the way there We're going to make some additional progress in Q4. we're going to make some additional progress in q4 And we think by Q1 timeframe, we should be in a place where we have not only the level of supply needed for that quarter, but we'll enter the second quarter with some buffer stock to really capture the full market opportunity there. There are other things going on within the supply chain, and I'm sure everybody in here has been hearing a lot about memory pricing in the market, something that we're now facing. We noted in our Q4 guidance, it's about 150 basis point headwind to our gross margins. This has been an issue that's been going on most of this year, and we've been able to mitigate it up until Q4 timeframe. We ask our supply chain to kind of manage that and absorb those costs, but we're now in the place where we are participating in some of that increase. And we think by Q1 timeframe, we should be in a place where we have not only the level of supply needed for that quarter, but we'll enter the second quarter with some buffer stock to really capture the full market opportunity there. and we think by q1 timeframe we should be in a place where we have not only the level of supply needed for that quarter but we'll enter the second quarter with some buffer stock to really capture the full market opportunity there There are other things going on within the supply chain, and I'm sure everybody in here has been hearing a lot about memory pricing in the market, something that we're now facing. there are other things going on within the supply chain and i'm sure everybody in here has been hearing a lot about memory pricing in the market something that we're now facing We noted in our Q4 guidance, it's about 150 basis point headwind to our gross margins. we noted in our q4 guidance it's about 150 basis point headwind to our gross margins This has been an issue that's been going on most of this year, and we've been able to mitigate it up until Q4 timeframe. this has been an issue that's been going on most of this year and we've been able to mitigate it up until q4 timeframe We ask our supply chain to kind of manage that and absorb those costs, but we're now in the place where we are participating in some of that increase. we ask our supply chain to kind of manage that and absorb those costs but we're now in the place where we are participating in some of that increase The good news is there are other things that are going on. We talked about our Investor Day that we are insourcing the managed switch OS, and so we're bringing that in-house. We'll have to invest some R&D resources to help develop features and maintain that code, but it is going to be a benefit to our gross margins in that 100-150 basis points range. So we're kind of offsetting some of those things. I would say on the memory side of things, we're investing a lot of time looking SKU by SKU to optimize our products and redesign in some cases to use portions of the memory market, like a 1 gig memory component that is a little more accessible and not seeing the surge pricing that other areas would be seeing. So where we can optimize, we're doing that right now. The good news is there are other things that are going on. the good news is there are other things that are going on We talked about our Investor Day that we are insourcing the managed switch OS, and so we're bringing that in-house. we talked about our investor day that we are insourcing the managed switch os and so we're bringing that in-house We'll have to invest some R&D resources to help develop features and maintain that code, but it is going to be a benefit to our gross margins in that 100-150 basis points range. we'll have to invest some r&d resources to help develop features and maintain that code but it is going to be a benefit to our gross margins in that 100-150 basis points range So we're kind of offsetting some of those things. so we're kind of offsetting some of those things I would say on the memory side of things, we're investing a lot of time looking SKU by SKU to optimize our products and redesign in some cases to use portions of the memory market, like a 1 gig memory component that is a little more accessible and not seeing the surge pricing that other areas would be seeing. i would say on the memory side of things we're investing a lot of time looking sku by sku to optimize our products and redesign in some cases to use portions of the memory market like a 1 gig memory component that is a little more accessible and not seeing the surge pricing that other areas would be seeing So where we can optimize, we're doing that right now. so where we can optimize we're doing that right now

Speaker 4: Do you think the 150 basis points in Q4 is kind of reflective of the current environment, or would there be additional that would potentially spill into 2026? Do you think the 150 basis points in Q4 is kind of reflective of the current environment, or would there be additional that would potentially spill into 2026? do you think the 150 basis points in q4 is kind of reflective of the current environment or would there be additional that would potentially spill into 2026

Speaker 1: I think as of right now, the 150 is about the impact to our gross margins with the current market environment. Hopefully, as we get into later next year, obviously with the big players in the DDR4 space exiting, there is opportunity for other people to pick up capacity, but how quickly that ramps is to be seen. I think as of right now, the 150 is about the impact to our gross margins with the current market environment. i think as of right now the 150 is about the impact to our gross margins with the current market environment Hopefully, as we get into later next year, obviously with the big players in the DDR4 space exiting, there is opportunity for other people to pick up capacity, but how quickly that ramps is to be seen. hopefully as we get into later next year obviously with the big players in the ddr4 space exiting there is opportunity for other people to pick up capacity but how quickly that ramps is to be seen

Speaker 4: Yep. Okay, that's helpful. I want to shift gears into the consumer side of the house, CJ. We're here in New York, almost Christmas time. Probably a festive question to ask how consumer behavior is this holiday season versus last? Yep. yep Okay, that's helpful. okay that's helpful I want to shift gears into the consumer side of the house, CJ. i want to shift gears into the consumer side of the house cj We're here in New York, almost Christmas time. we're here in new york almost christmas time Probably a festive question to ask how consumer behavior is this holiday season versus last? probably a festive question to ask how consumer behavior is this holiday season versus last

Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. You read a lot about consumer confidence challenges and inflationary impacts. We haven't seen that. We've to date had a really good holiday period. We're meeting expectations, maybe surpassing them a little bit. And one thing that I would attribute that to, you'll recall when we were here last year, we talked about moving back into good, better, best for our routing category, for our mesh category. That allows us to participate in the key buying events much more fully and aggressively. And when you do that, there's a halo effect outside of the Cyber Monday, the Black Friday, and the weeks around that. And so our execution there has improved, but we're seeing pretty resilient consumer behavior at the moment. Yeah, it's interesting. yeah it's interesting You read a lot about consumer confidence challenges and inflationary impacts. you read a lot about consumer confidence challenges and inflationary impacts We haven't seen that. we haven't seen that We've to date had a really good holiday period. we've to date had a really good holiday period We're meeting expectations, maybe surpassing them a little bit. we're meeting expectations maybe surpassing them a little bit And one thing that I would attribute that to, you'll recall when we were here last year, we talked about moving back into good, better, best for our routing category, for our mesh category. and one thing that i would attribute that to you'll recall when we were here last year we talked about moving back into good better best for our routing category for our mesh category That allows us to participate in the key buying events much more fully and aggressively. that allows us to participate in the key buying events much more fully and aggressively And when you do that, there's a halo effect outside of the Cyber Monday, the Black Friday, and the weeks around that. and when you do that there's a halo effect outside of the cyber monday the black friday and the weeks around that And so our execution there has improved, but we're seeing pretty resilient consumer behavior at the moment. and so our execution there has improved but we're seeing pretty resilient consumer behavior at the moment

Speaker 4: Got it. And then any changes from the way that the channel is managing? I mean, there's been periods of time where they want to own more or less inventory and stock and weeks of channel inventory. How would you describe maybe your interactions with your big go-to-market partners? Got it. got it And then any changes from the way that the channel is managing? and then any changes from the way that the channel is managing I mean, there's been periods of time where they want to own more or less inventory and stock and weeks of channel inventory. i mean there's been periods of time where they want to own more or less inventory and stock and weeks of channel inventory How would you describe maybe your interactions with your big go-to-market partners? how would you describe maybe your interactions with your big go-to-market partners

Speaker 3: Yeah, we haven't seen a big shift of late in terms of that. That was a big push coming out of COVID. Everybody had a lot of inventory. That led to the big reset we did in Q2 of 2024 that allowed our partners to aggressively move down their inventory position. Whenever you have that excess, it's a very costly endeavor, so we're living by our philosophy of matching sell-in to sell-through whenever we can, and we just haven't seen a big behavior change from partners in either direction. Yeah, we haven't seen a big shift of late in terms of that. yeah we haven't seen a big shift of late in terms of that That was a big push coming out of COVID. that was a big push coming out of covid Everybody had a lot of inventory. everybody had a lot of inventory That led to the big reset we did in Q2 of 2024 that allowed our partners to aggressively move down their inventory position. that led to the big reset we did in q2 of 2024 that allowed our partners to aggressively move down their inventory position Whenever you have that excess, it's a very costly endeavor, so we're living by our philosophy of matching sell-in to sell-through whenever we can, and we just haven't seen a big behavior change from partners in either direction. whenever you have that excess it's a very costly endeavor so we're living by our philosophy of matching sell-in to sell-through whenever we can and we just haven't seen a big behavior change from partners in either direction

Speaker 4: Okay, great. And we've got a new Wi-Fi standard, Wi-Fi 8. I think we've gone through these various cycles and maybe become a little bit numb to what they mean going forward. Maybe just kind of summarize what Wi-Fi 8 is versus 7 and what the opportunity that might bring. Okay, great. okay great And we've got a new Wi-Fi standard, Wi-Fi 8. and we've got a new wi-fi standard wi-fi 8 I think we've gone through these various cycles and maybe become a little bit numb to what they mean going forward. i think we've gone through these various cycles and maybe become a little bit numb to what they mean going forward Maybe just kind of summarize what Wi-Fi 8 is versus 7 and what the opportunity that might bring. maybe just kind of summarize what wi-fi 8 is versus 7 and what the opportunity that might bring

Speaker 3: Yeah. So it has both an industry and technology impact, and then it's super relevant to Netgear, and I'll explain why. From an industry technology perspective, the days of incrementing Wi-Fi by improving throughput are largely behind us. Wi-Fi 7 has incredible throughput. Wi-Fi 8 is much more about lower latency, higher reliability, like a step change function. And so we're actually, when you think about, Jonathan shared a lot more on this at the Investor Day, but when you think about connectivity in the home and the problems that persist there, it's not a throughput problem. It's about reliability. It's about latency. And so we're excited about the potential that Wi-Fi 8, along with AI, bring to the table to truly take us forward in solving connectivity in the home. Yeah. yeah So it has both an industry and technology impact, and then it's super relevant to Netgear, and I'll explain why. so it has both an industry and technology impact and then it's super relevant to netgear and i'll explain why From an industry technology perspective, the days of incrementing Wi-Fi by improving throughput are largely behind us. from an industry technology perspective the days of incrementing wi-fi by improving throughput are largely behind us Wi-Fi 7 has incredible throughput. wi-fi 7 has incredible throughput Wi-Fi 8 is much more about lower latency, higher reliability, like a step change function. wi-fi 8 is much more about lower latency higher reliability like a step change function And so we're actually, when you think about, Jonathan shared a lot more on this at the Investor Day, but when you think about connectivity in the home and the problems that persist there, it's not a throughput problem. and so we're actually when you think about jonathan shared a lot more on this at the investor day but when you think about connectivity in the home and the problems that persist there it's not a throughput problem It's about reliability. it's about reliability It's about latency. it's about latency And so we're excited about the potential that Wi-Fi 8, along with AI, bring to the table to truly take us forward in solving connectivity in the home. and so we're excited about the potential that wi-fi 8 along with ai bring to the table to truly take us forward in solving connectivity in the home And as we shared, similar to the way we think about Pro AV, it's very important for us, for our in-home partners, for us to work together with them to solve connectivity in the home. Together, we announced the Google partnership at Investor Day. From a Netgear perspective, it's relevant because when I joined, Jonathan hadn't started, Wi-Fi 7 products were coming to market. We quickly changed the nature of our roadmap to good, better, best, as I said before. Wi-Fi 8 is really our first opportunity to change our product portfolio to align with Jonathan's vision for how we're going to solve connectivity in the home. So it's very relevant to us from that perspective as well. So we're really excited about it. And as we shared, similar to the way we think about Pro AV, it's very important for us, for our in-home partners, for us to work together with them to solve connectivity in the home. and as we shared similar to the way we think about pro av it's very important for us for our in-home partners for us to work together with them to solve connectivity in the home Together, we announced the Google partnership at Investor Day. together we announced the google partnership at investor day From a Netgear perspective, it's relevant because when I joined, Jonathan hadn't started, Wi-Fi 7 products were coming to market. from a netgear perspective it's relevant because when i joined jonathan hadn't started wi-fi 7 products were coming to market We quickly changed the nature of our roadmap to good, better, best, as I said before. we quickly changed the nature of our roadmap to good better best as i said before Wi-Fi 8 is really our first opportunity to change our product portfolio to align with Jonathan's vision for how we're going to solve connectivity in the home. wi-fi 8 is really our first opportunity to change our product portfolio to align with jonathan's vision for how we're going to solve connectivity in the home So it's very relevant to us from that perspective as well. so it's very relevant to us from that perspective as well So we're really excited about it. so we're really excited about it

Speaker 4: And maybe talk about the subscription opportunity on the consumer side. We've heard about that for years for Netgear, and things like Armor made some sense, but you also spent some time at Analyst Day talking about this, and just would be helpful to recap how you're thinking about consumer subscription in particular. And maybe talk about the subscription opportunity on the consumer side. and maybe talk about the subscription opportunity on the consumer side We've heard about that for years for Netgear, and things like Armor made some sense, but you also spent some time at Analyst Day talking about this, and just would be helpful to recap how you're thinking about consumer subscription in particular. we've heard about that for years for netgear and things like armor made some sense but you also spent some time at analyst day talking about this and just would be helpful to recap how you're thinking about consumer subscription in particular

Speaker 3: Yeah. So long term, we see a real opportunity to scale that part of our business. There's a top-of-funnel challenge that we're addressing by moving away from just the premium segment. Then there's a number of subscription fundamentals that we're in the process of addressing. I've talked about this ties into Wi-Fi 8 as well, like debundling our subscription offer from our device offerings because we've largely connected the two, and that makes it harder to drive new subscribers and true recurring revenue. But at the foundation of our subscription today, it's really cybersecurity, which makes a ton of sense because networking in the home is kind of your digital front door. And by upgrading with our subscription product, which we call Armor today, it really enhances that peace of mind that you get as a household. It also comes with. We partner with Bitdefender in offering that. Yeah. yeah So long term, we see a real opportunity to scale that part of our business. so long term we see a real opportunity to scale that part of our business There's a top-of-funnel challenge that we're addressing by moving away from just the premium segment. there's a top-of-funnel challenge that we're addressing by moving away from just the premium segment Then there's a number of subscription fundamentals that we're in the process of addressing. then there's a number of subscription fundamentals that we're in the process of addressing I've talked about this ties into Wi-Fi 8 as well, like debundling our subscription offer from our device offerings because we've largely connected the two, and that makes it harder to drive new subscribers and true recurring revenue. i've talked about this ties into wi-fi 8 as well like debundling our subscription offer from our device offerings because we've largely connected the two and that makes it harder to drive new subscribers and true recurring revenue But at the foundation of our subscription today, it's really cybersecurity, which makes a ton of sense because networking in the home is kind of your digital front door. but at the foundation of our subscription today it's really cybersecurity which makes a ton of sense because networking in the home is kind of your digital front door And by upgrading with our subscription product, which we call Armor today, it really enhances that peace of mind that you get as a household. and by upgrading with our subscription product which we call armor today it really enhances that peace of mind that you get as a household It also comes with. it also comes with We partner with Bitdefender in offering that. we partner with bitdefender in offering that So the value that Bitdefender provides on a standalone basis is bundled. So you get all of the routing mesh endpoint in the home protection, and then you get the protection you would otherwise get with Bitdefender. So it's a really great value. And over time, again, as we truly solve connectivity in the home, we see opportunities to add value for consumers and grow that. So we've got about 36 million of ARR on the consumer side of the business today, and we're excited about growing that. So the value that Bitdefender provides on a standalone basis is bundled. so the value that bitdefender provides on a standalone basis is bundled So you get all of the routing mesh endpoint in the home protection, and then you get the protection you would otherwise get with Bitdefender. so you get all of the routing mesh endpoint in the home protection and then you get the protection you would otherwise get with bitdefender So it's a really great value. so it's a really great value And over time, again, as we truly solve connectivity in the home, we see opportunities to add value for consumers and grow that. and over time again as we truly solve connectivity in the home we see opportunities to add value for consumers and grow that So we've got about 36 million of ARR on the consumer side of the business today, and we're excited about growing that. so we've got about 36 million of arr on the consumer side of the business today and we're excited about growing that

Speaker 4: Great. Just rounding out this side, the service provider piece has undergone some changes, and I think you're doing some things to make that business make more sense going forward and optimize it. Maybe just recap some of the changes that you've made and kind of the outlook for that piece of the business going forward? Great. great Just rounding out this side, the service provider piece has undergone some changes, and I think you're doing some things to make that business make more sense going forward and optimize it. just rounding out this side the service provider piece has undergone some changes and i think you're doing some things to make that business make more sense going forward and optimize it Maybe just recap some of the changes that you've made and kind of the outlook for that piece of the business going forward? maybe just recap some of the changes that you've made and kind of the outlook for that piece of the business going forward

Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it's important to I think people tend to sometimes confuse a few different things there. So we have service provider where today we largely sell our mobile hotspots into carrier partners like AT&T. We have our cable products that are sold at retail, but those only work if you're connected to a cable ISP like a Comcast or a Spectrum. And then we have just 5G products more generally. On the first, that's been a challenge business. We said at Analyst Day that's declined year to date about 20%. We're still going to make great products for our service provider customers so that we can leverage that technology investments in other parts of the business. But we have said that we don't expect that to be a growth business. And in fact, we're going to put it to we've said the opposite. Yeah. yeah I think it's important to I think people tend to sometimes confuse a few different things there. i think it's important to i think people tend to sometimes confuse a few different things there So we have service provider where today we largely sell our mobile hotspots into carrier partners like AT&T. so we have service provider where today we largely sell our mobile hotspots into carrier partners like at&t We have our cable products that are sold at retail, but those only work if you're connected to a cable ISP like a Comcast or a Spectrum. we have our cable products that are sold at retail but those only work if you're connected to a cable isp like a comcast or a spectrum And then we have just 5G products more generally. and then we have just 5g products more generally On the first, that's been a challenge business. on the first that's been a challenge business We said at Analyst Day that's declined year to date about 20%. we said at analyst day that's declined year to date about 20% We're still going to make great products for our service provider customers so that we can leverage that technology investments in other parts of the business. we're still going to make great products for our service provider customers so that we can leverage that technology investments in other parts of the business But we have said that we don't expect that to be a growth business. but we have said that we don't expect that to be a growth business And in fact, we're going to put it to we've said the opposite. and in fact we're going to put it to we've said the opposite We think that's going to continue to decline, and we're going to carve it out so investors can see that business going forward. The cable products is in a similar boat. It's more and more ISPs are making it difficult to attach a third-party cable product like ours to their networks. So that's been a declining market, and we're going to continue to harvest that. Consumers value our products. We're going to continue to support them, but we don't expect that to be a growth business. Our 5G products are very strategic on both the consumer and enterprise side because if you think about Pramod's portfolio of enterprise networking and security, a lot of those customers today are using our mobile hotspots for primary connectivity, for enterprise failover, and we don't make that easy. We don't have the right level of integration. We don't have the right form factor. We think that's going to continue to decline, and we're going to carve it out so investors can see that business going forward. we think that's going to continue to decline and we're going to carve it out so investors can see that business going forward The cable products is in a similar boat. the cable products is in a similar boat It's more and more ISPs are making it difficult to attach a third-party cable product like ours to their networks. it's more and more isps are making it difficult to attach a third-party cable product like ours to their networks So that's been a declining market, and we're going to continue to harvest that. so that's been a declining market and we're going to continue to harvest that Consumers value our products. consumers value our products We're going to continue to support them, but we don't expect that to be a growth business. we're going to continue to support them but we don't expect that to be a growth business Our 5G products are very strategic on both the consumer and enterprise side because if you think about Pramod's portfolio of enterprise networking and security, a lot of those customers today are using our mobile hotspots for primary connectivity, for enterprise failover, and we don't make that easy. our 5g products are very strategic on both the consumer and enterprise side because if you think about pramod's portfolio of enterprise networking and security a lot of those customers today are using our mobile hotspots for primary connectivity for enterprise failover and we don't make that easy We don't have the right level of integration. we don't have the right level of integration We don't have the right form factor. we don't have the right form factor On the consumer side, people use our mobile hotspots for failover at home. Similarly, it's not properly integrated to our Orbi mesh systems or our Nighthawk platforms. So we see those 5G technology and development capabilities we have are strategic and something that we plan to continue to invest in specifically to solve problems for consumers in each of those segments. On the consumer side, people use our mobile hotspots for failover at home. on the consumer side people use our mobile hotspots for failover at home Similarly, it's not properly integrated to our Orbi mesh systems or our Nighthawk platforms. similarly it's not properly integrated to our orbi mesh systems or our nighthawk platforms So we see those 5G technology and development capabilities we have are strategic and something that we plan to continue to invest in specifically to solve problems for consumers in each of those segments. so we see those 5g technology and development capabilities we have are strategic and something that we plan to continue to invest in specifically to solve problems for consumers in each of those segments

Speaker 4: So we've so far talked about you started with the enterprise side. We've talked about the consumer side. How do you think about the synergy between consumer and enterprise, and when would it potentially make sense to keep them together or let them operate separately? Have you thought about those things? So we've so far talked about you started with the enterprise side. so we've so far talked about you started with the enterprise side We've talked about the consumer side. we've talked about the consumer side How do you think about the synergy between consumer and enterprise, and when would it potentially make sense to keep them together or let them operate separately? how do you think about the synergy between consumer and enterprise and when would it potentially make sense to keep them together or let them operate separately Have you thought about those things? have you thought about those things

Speaker 3: Yeah, they're definitely different businesses, different end customers. We get a lot of synergies from the investments we make in operations like our supply chain, G&A, central marketing. So there is value in having the businesses together because we get leverage from those parts of the business. If you think about the transformation roadmap we outlined at Investor Day, we're largely exiting phase one, which is getting the foundation set. Phase two, which we described as like a 2026 to 2028 effort, that's really about strengthening the core businesses because today that gives us optionality, whether it's to grow more aggressively on an inorganic basis. Once we build value back into Netgear, we have optionality for where we take both businesses. But today, we have a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of improving the performance of the businesses, and they're both subscale. Yeah, they're definitely different businesses, different end customers. yeah they're definitely different businesses different end customers We get a lot of synergies from the investments we make in operations like our supply chain, G&A, central marketing. we get a lot of synergies from the investments we make in operations like our supply chain g&a central marketing So there is value in having the businesses together because we get leverage from those parts of the business. so there is value in having the businesses together because we get leverage from those parts of the business If you think about the transformation roadmap we outlined at Investor Day, we're largely exiting phase one, which is getting the foundation set. if you think about the transformation roadmap we outlined at investor day we're largely exiting phase one which is getting the foundation set Phase two, which we described as like a 2026 to 2028 effort, that's really about strengthening the core businesses because today that gives us optionality, whether it's to grow more aggressively on an inorganic basis. phase two which we described as like a 2026 to 2028 effort that's really about strengthening the core businesses because today that gives us optionality whether it's to grow more aggressively on an inorganic basis Once we build value back into Netgear, we have optionality for where we take both businesses. once we build value back into netgear we have optionality for where we take both businesses But today, we have a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of improving the performance of the businesses, and they're both subscale. but today we have a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of improving the performance of the businesses and they're both subscale So our focus is on growth and enhancing the P&L for each of them, and then the rest will take care of itself. So our focus is on growth and enhancing the P&L for each of them, and then the rest will take care of itself. so our focus is on growth and enhancing the p&l for each of them and then the rest will take care of itself

Speaker 4: Got it. Bryan, I wanted to ask a couple of balance sheet and cash flow questions. Maybe just starting out with cash flow, you've obviously had some healthy free cash generation. You've got a very clean balance sheet. Maybe just recap where you're at from a cash position and how you're thinking about sort of sustainable levels of free cash flow going forward. Got it. got it Bryan, I wanted to ask a couple of balance sheet and cash flow questions. bryan i wanted to ask a couple of balance sheet and cash flow questions Maybe just starting out with cash flow, you've obviously had some healthy free cash generation. maybe just starting out with cash flow you've obviously had some healthy free cash generation You've got a very clean balance sheet. you've got a very clean balance sheet Maybe just recap where you're at from a cash position and how you're thinking about sort of sustainable levels of free cash flow going forward. maybe just recap where you're at from a cash position and how you're thinking about sort of sustainable levels of free cash flow going forward

Speaker 1: Yeah. So if I look back to the start of 2024, we were sitting about $285 million in cash, and today we have $326 million, which is net of some healthy level of stock repurchase that we've been doing. So we've repurchased $69 million over that timeframe. We've also completed a couple of acquisitions. So we've been able to deploy capital strategically and return capital to shareholders over that time and still sitting on a pretty healthy cash balance. We continue to believe we need about $125-$150 million to operate. So we have some extra cash there. And in terms of free cash flow generation, we aren't very capital intensive. We would expect to convert cash at a rate of 85%-100% of non-GAAP net income. Yeah. yeah So if I look back to the start of 2024, we were sitting about $285 million in cash, and today we have $326 million, which is net of some healthy level of stock repurchase that we've been doing. so if i look back to the start of 2024 we were sitting about $285 million in cash and today we have $326 million which is net of some healthy level of stock repurchase that we've been doing So we've repurchased $69 million over that timeframe. so we've repurchased $69 million over that timeframe We've also completed a couple of acquisitions. we've also completed a couple of acquisitions So we've been able to deploy capital strategically and return capital to shareholders over that time and still sitting on a pretty healthy cash balance. so we've been able to deploy capital strategically and return capital to shareholders over that time and still sitting on a pretty healthy cash balance We continue to believe we need about $125-$150 million to operate. we continue to believe we need about $125-$150 million to operate So we have some extra cash there. so we have some extra cash there And in terms of free cash flow generation, we aren't very capital intensive. and in terms of free cash flow generation we aren't very capital intensive We would expect to convert cash at a rate of 85%-100% of non-GAAP net income. we would expect to convert cash at a rate of 85%-100% of non-gaap net income

Speaker 4: And you talk about having excess cash. Maybe talk about capital allocation priorities. What's the right mix of the various options that you have? And you talk about having excess cash. and you talk about having excess cash Maybe talk about capital allocation priorities. maybe talk about capital allocation priorities What's the right mix of the various options that you have? what's the right mix of the various options that you have

Speaker 1: Yeah, we continue to talk about it. It's a three-pronged approach. We're obviously going to fund the investments in the organic business. We've talked at length about that. On the enterprise side, we have go-to-market gaps that we're filling. We're insourcing software development. There's other things with regards to R&D. So we'll fund those investments to drive long-term value creation. We also will look at M&A opportunities, things that are product adjacencies or capability gaps. And then lastly is return of capital to shareholders. We've been, as I said earlier, active repurchases of our stock, 3.4 million shares over that seven-quarter timeframe, an average cost of $19.99. So we deploy capital in all three of those phases. Yeah, we continue to talk about it. yeah we continue to talk about it It's a three-pronged approach. it's a three-pronged approach We're obviously going to fund the investments in the organic business. we're obviously going to fund the investments in the organic business We've talked at length about that. we've talked at length about that On the enterprise side, we have go-to-market gaps that we're filling. on the enterprise side we have go-to-market gaps that we're filling We're insourcing software development. we're insourcing software development There's other things with regards to R&D. there's other things with regards to r&d So we'll fund those investments to drive long-term value creation. so we'll fund those investments to drive long-term value creation We also will look at M&A opportunities, things that are product adjacencies or capability gaps. we also will look at m&a opportunities things that are product adjacencies or capability gaps And then lastly is return of capital to shareholders. and then lastly is return of capital to shareholders We've been, as I said earlier, active repurchases of our stock, 3.4 million shares over that seven-quarter timeframe, an average cost of $19.99. we've been as i said earlier active repurchases of our stock 3.4 million shares over that seven-quarter timeframe an average cost of $19.99 So we deploy capital in all three of those phases. so we deploy capital in all three of those phases

Speaker 4: Yeah. Time for one question before we wrap. Anything pressing out there? Yep. Yeah. yeah Time for one question before we wrap. time for one question before we wrap Anything pressing out there? anything pressing out there Yep. yep What could a TP-Link ban look like? Would it be critical infrastructure, legal, healthcare, finance, or would it be every scenario? What could a TP-Link ban look like? what could a tp-link ban look like Would it be critical infrastructure, legal, healthcare, finance, or would it be every scenario? would it be critical infrastructure legal healthcare finance or would it be every scenario

Speaker 3: Yeah, we can only really comment on what we've read. And I would say it's hard to read between the lines of how that would manifest itself in a specific action. There's a very broad range of things that could happen there, everything from scope of products that are included and then the speed and timing of an action. So it's a little bit ambiguous at the moment. Yeah, we can only really comment on what we've read. yeah we can only really comment on what we've read And I would say it's hard to read between the lines of how that would manifest itself in a specific action. and i would say it's hard to read between the lines of how that would manifest itself in a specific action There's a very broad range of things that could happen there, everything from scope of products that are included and then the speed and timing of an action. there's a very broad range of things that could happen there everything from scope of products that are included and then the speed and timing of an action So it's a little bit ambiguous at the moment. so it's a little bit ambiguous at the moment

Speaker 4: But you've also talked about kind of like the state of the market, and I think they're currently number one market share. Is that right? But you've also talked about kind of like the state of the market, and I think they're currently number one market share. but you've also talked about kind of like the state of the market and i think they're currently number one market share Is that right? is that right

Speaker 3: Yeah. On the retail side, from a unit perspective, the data that we look at shows them as a significant market leader. And also they lead from a market share perspective on a revenue basis. Yeah. yeah On the retail side, from a unit perspective, the data that we look at shows them as a significant market leader. on the retail side from a unit perspective the data that we look at shows them as a significant market leader And also they lead from a market share perspective on a revenue basis. and also they lead from a market share perspective on a revenue basis

Speaker 4: Yeah. Makes sense. Well, let's wrap it up. I guess what's the key message if you wanted to kind of boil down the story to an investor who's maybe revisiting the story or newer to it? What would you like them to walk away with today as they think about Netgear? Yeah. yeah Makes sense. makes sense Well, let's wrap it up. well let's wrap it up I guess what's the key message if you wanted to kind of boil down the story to an investor who's maybe revisiting the story or newer to it? i guess what's the key message if you wanted to kind of boil down the story to an investor who's maybe revisiting the story or newer to it What would you like them to walk away with today as they think about Netgear? what would you like them to walk away with today as they think about netgear

Speaker 3: Yeah. So we are executing on a very bold and significant transformation. The first couple of years or so have gone really great, but we're actually even more excited about what's to come. And so we'd really, for those who think they understand what Netgear is about, I would encourage them to go and watch our Investor Day because we really outline in a lot of detail where we're playing, how we're going to win, what the size of those markets are, what do we think the financial profile of the business looks like in the mid and the long term, and we're fired up about it. Yeah. yeah So we are executing on a very bold and significant transformation. so we are executing on a very bold and significant transformation The first couple of years or so have gone really great, but we're actually even more excited about what's to come. the first couple of years or so have gone really great but we're actually even more excited about what's to come And so we'd really, for those who think they understand what Netgear is about, I would encourage them to go and watch our Investor Day because we really outline in a lot of detail where we're playing, how we're going to win, what the size of those markets are, what do we think the financial profile of the business looks like in the mid and the long term, and we're fired up about it. and so we'd really for those who think they understand what netgear is about i would encourage them to go and watch our investor day because we really outline in a lot of detail where we're playing how we're going to win what the size of those markets are what do we think the financial profile of the business looks like in the mid and the long term and we're fired up about it

Speaker 4: Sounds great. CJ, Bryan, thank you so much. Sounds great. sounds great CJ, Bryan, thank you so much. cj bryan thank you so much

Speaker 3: Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Adam. thanks adam