Ribbon Communications - Q3 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, greetings, and welcome to the Ribbon Communications third quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star and zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Joni Roberts, Chief Marketing Officer. Please go ahead.

Joni Roberts (CMO)

Good afternoon, and welcome to Ribbon's third quarter 2024 financial results conference call. I'm Joni Roberts, Chief Marketing Officer at Ribbon Communications. Also on the call today, Bruce McClelland, Ribbon's Chief Executive Officer, and John Townsend, who will shortly assume the role of Ribbon's Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being webcast live and will be archived on the Investors Relations section of our website, rbbn.com, where both our press release and supplemental slides are currently available. Certain matters we'll be discussing today, including the business outlook and financial projections for fourth quarter of 2024 and beyond, are forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties that cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in our documents filed with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K.

I refer you to our safe harbor statement, including the supplemental financial information posted on our website. In addition, we'll present Non-GAAP financial information on this call. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measure are included in the earnings press release we issued earlier today, as well as the supplemental financial information we prepared for this conference call, which, again, are both available on the investor relations section of our website. And now I'd like to turn it over to Bruce. Bruce?

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Great. Thanks, Joni. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today to discuss our Q3 results and outlook for the rest of the year. First, as many of you know, Mick Lopez announced his plan to retire and will be with us through the end of the month. As I've stated before, Mick has been instrumental in maturing the operations of the company and accomplishing multiple strategic initiatives. Mick, thank you for your leadership and contributions to Ribbon, and all the best to you in your retirement. I'd now like to welcome John Townsend, who is joining us as Chief Financial Officer, effective November first. John is a proven financial leader with an impressive career that spans over thirty years, leading large, complex financial organizations for several of the industry's largest service providers in multiple countries.

Given our focus in this area and the continued gains we're making, I'm really looking forward to the insight John will bring us. He'll be available in our Q&A session this afternoon. Now, on to Q3 results. I'm very pleased with our performance in the quarter, highlighted by the return to growth in our Cloud and Edge business. As we indicated on our last earnings call, we have a number of tailwinds that will support and underpin this business for years to come and will have a positive effect on the overall margins for the company. And while IP Optical network sales were lower year-over-year this quarter, following the suspension of product sales to Eastern Europe beginning last quarter, we are growing in other areas.

In fact, we're having a very strong second half in the U.S., where our cross-sell strategy is working well, and we have numerous projects focused on expanding rural internet availability and capacity. We also continue to see more opportunities related to competitive shifts in the market, where customers are assessing their options to replace incumbent suppliers, and we have very good opportunities to gain market share. One of the most notable areas of growth for us across both businesses is the federal and defense industry. Year to date, sales have grown 60% as compared to 2023 and accounted for 13% of overall sales so far this year. Our portfolio of secure communication applications and network infrastructure is a great fit for this important market.

In the U.S. defense segment, we have developed a very strong position with multiple branches of the armed forces as they replace legacy systems with modern, cloud-based voice solutions that provide the security and survivability needed to carry out their combat and peacekeeping missions. In Europe, our secure IP and optical data networking platforms are widely deployed in countries such as Israel, Switzerland, and Finland. Our combined portfolio has broad applicability across many more federal agencies and countries, creating opportunity for significant further growth. In the third quarter, overall sales were $210 million, increasing 3.5% year-over-year and 9% quarter-over-quarter, led by the growth in Cloud and Edge. Earnings were once again very solid and at the top end of our guidance, with adjusted non-GAAP EBITDA of $30 million.

Non-GAAP gross margin of 55% exceeded expectations and was at the high end of guidance, with a positive mix of product sales and good execution from our professional services team. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $90 million in the quarter, up slightly year-over-year, mostly due to mid-year employee compensation adjustments. Year to date, profitability for the company has increased $15 million or 32% on an adjusted EBITDA basis as compared to 2023. Trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA is now $106 million.... Now, a little more detail on our operating segments. In the Cloud and Edge business, as expected, sales to Verizon increased substantially in the quarter, reaching 15% of overall company sales.

The initial three-year phase of the voice network modernization project we announced earlier this year is fully underway, and the combined Verizon and Ribbon team are executing very well. Our revenue run rate is now exceeding $100 million per year with this key customer and is expected to grow in 2025. In the U.S. Federal market, we announced an important project win to modernize and secure the U.S. Federal softswitch backbone with our state-of-the-art voice communication infrastructure. We now have deployments in four branches of the U.S. military as we continue to expand our presence in defense networks across the globe. One of the key drivers behind the improved gross margin this quarter was the increase in SBC sales and the greater software mix.

This is one of the best quarters for SBC sales that we've had in several years, up more than 60% from the third quarter last year. This included sales across a number of markets, including U.S. and international service providers, U.S. Federal, and a number of large enterprise customers. Also, as I mentioned earlier, we're in active discussion with a number of customers regarding the replacement of Microsoft Metaswitch platforms. We have a large funnel of opportunities, and we've closed several initial deals this quarter. We also closed a sizable project with our partner JSC to provide a full IMS voice platform, leveraging our SBC and policy solutions along with their IMS core. This is a relatively new area for us and has the potential for us to gain share in a portion of the market where we've not fully addressed in the past.

Overall, Cloud and Edge revenue in the third quarter was $128 million, up 11% year-over-year and 16% quarter over quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin neared an all-time high at 68%, and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA contribution grew 20% year-over-year to $38 million, or 30% of revenue for the quarter, also near an all-time high. Book-to-bill was very strong at over 1.4 times, with an increasing backlog associated with network transformation projects. In summary, this was a great quarter for our Cloud and Edge business and sets us up for an even stronger performance in the fourth quarter. In our IP Optical segment, the highlight of the quarter was certainly the increased business in the U.S.

As mentioned in our last earnings call, we had very good backlog entering the quarter in the U.S. market, particularly with regional and rural broadband providers. This resulted in our strongest quarter ever in the U.S., with revenue increasing more than 100%, both quarter over quarter and year-over-year, and accounted for more than 20% of IP Optical sales. We expect the momentum in the U.S. to continue in the fourth quarter across a number of use cases and customers, including U.S. rural and regional broadband, middle mile transport, TDM circuit emulation with an increasing number of service providers, as well as critical infrastructure providers such as American Electric Power. We anticipate further growth in 2025 as larger service providers accelerate their modernization of the TDM infrastructure and leverage our IP routing technology.

IP Optical sales to operators in India, including Bharti and Vodafone Idea, increased 16% quarter over quarter, but are tracking a little below last year's level. We continue to expect the fourth quarter to be the best of the year in this region, with the second half approximately 30% higher than the first half of the year. This is in large part due to the renewed investment being made by Vodafone Idea to upgrade their network infrastructure. In Europe, IP Optical sales in the quarter increased 15% year-over-year and are up 17% year to date. Central Europe continues to be our strongest region, including Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where we have a good mix of critical infrastructure, service provider, and defense customers supporting the business. We also have a good pipeline of opportunities with service providers in Southern Europe, including Italy and Spain.

Finally, from an innovation perspective, at the recent Next Generation Optical Networking event in Paris, we demonstrated the industry's first 400G ZR+ module that supports field upgradeability to 800G ZR+. This enables operators to cost effectively support both metro and long-haul transport on a single module, enhancing performance and cost efficiencies with an open, interoperable architecture. Our new Apollo 9408 compact modular platform provides industry-leading density with 25.6 terabits per two rack units and an impressive low power consumption of less than 0.07 watts per gigabit. It's a great platform, ideally suited for growing data center demand. From a financial perspective, IP Optical revenue in the third quarter was $82 million, down 6% year-over-year and flat to the second quarter.

But excluding sales to Eastern Europe, revenue from all other customers was up 4% year-over-year. As expected, gross margins were lower at 36% as a result of the change in mix. Book-to-bill was 1.0 times in the quarter after adjustments associated with Eastern Europe. Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA for IP Optical was -$8 million, down $4 million from the prior year. Year to date, adjusted EBITDA is $21 million improved over the first three quarters of last year. Now let me wrap up on our third quarter results with a few key operational metrics that Mick would normally comment on. John will pick this up next quarter. Cash from operations was -$15 million, and we ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $40 million.

This was lower than anticipated due to approximately $25 million of accounts receivable collections expected at the end of September that were delayed into October, increasing our quarter-end AR by approximately $40 million. More than half this amount was already received in the first two weeks of October, and we expect positive cash generation this quarter, with AR staying at a similar level due to significant increase in shipments this quarter. Interest expense in the quarter was $10 million, reflecting our new credit facility, but we will benefit from the 50 basis points SOFR rate reduction recently implemented. We also invested $7 million this quarter as we prepare to relocate an R&D facility and $2 million in typical CapEx investment. We now estimate a non-GAAP tax rate for the full year of approximately 40%, given shifts in regional profit and loss contributions.

Now, a few comments on the fourth quarter and outlook for2025. The operating environment continues to improve and presents an excellent opportunity for us to maintain our momentum, growing revenue and profitability. Specific trends influencing our business include the following key areas. First, network modernization to drive down cost and retire obsolete infrastructure is a key factor behind the increasing investment from service providers, enterprises, and federal agencies to upgrade their voice communication infrastructure. Legacy TDM and copper networks are increasingly expensive to support, and programs such as the Verizon Voice Core Modernization Project are clear evidence of the priority now being placed on this part of the network. We have a growing number of sizable projects with other large service providers that will drive further growth in our Cloud and Edge secure communications business in2025 and in years to come.

Second, as I mentioned earlier, we're having very good success in federal and defense sectors in the U.S. and Europe. Mission-critical applications that rely on highly secure networks that are always on and never fail. This is an area where Ribbon really differentiates from the competition. Third, there continues to be substantial investment to improve internet availability and performance for underserved segments of the broadband market. This is an area where we're really executing well on our cross-sell strategy, and the upcoming U.S. BEAD program will further increase funding across the entire ecosystem. And finally, the shifting competitive environment is creating further opportunity for Ribbon to win new accounts across multiple regions.

In the IP optical space, the merger of Nokia and Infinera introduces supply chain concerns that we expect to capitalize on, and Microsoft has generated significant uncertainty around the Metaswitch install base that introduces substantial replacement opportunities for us. The focus we have on cross-selling the entire portfolio to our broad base of customers continues to generate results, as highlighted by the success we're having with U.S. rural broadband providers, and the integration of our Neptune IP router with our voice transformation portfolio has opened doors across the entire U.S. service provider landscape to modernize the aging TDM voice network, leveraging our IP routing technology. While it's still early, we expect the combination of these opportunities to enable us to grow revenue in 2025 in the mid-single digit range, even after accounting for the reduction in sales to Eastern Europe.

We do not anticipate significant changes in operating expenses, enabling the majority of the incremental margin to contribute directly to earnings, where we expect to grow at a double-digit rate. In the fourth quarter, we continue to expect an excellent finish to the year with sequential growth in both businesses. Voice modernization programs with Verizon and multiple other carriers will continue to ramp, and we anticipate several new awards with U.S. federal defense agencies. We expect the momentum in the U.S. rural broadband segment to continue at similar levels to the third quarter, and we expect a seasonally strong quarter with enterprise customers as we renew annual enterprise license agreements. Our guidance for the fourth quarter projects year-over-year sales growth of approximately 8% at the midpoint, reflecting all of these positive trends.

We anticipate gross margin to be slightly higher than the notable level we posted in the third quarter due to the expected higher mix of Cloud and Edge sales. Based on this, for the fourth quarter, we're projecting revenue in a range of $235 million-$255 million, non-GAAP gross margins in a range of 55.5%-56%, and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA in a range of $46 million-$52 million. We certainly recognize that our guidance for the fourth quarter implies significant sequential growth, but as I've outlined, we have good momentum across multiple areas, along with strong bookings in the third quarter, that provide good visibility and confidence for an excellent finish for the year.

Overall, we're making good progress on our key strategic goals, including returning to growth in our telco voice infrastructure business, diversifying and expanding sales in enterprise market verticals, including financial, healthcare, energy, transportation, and government information security, cross-selling the entire portfolio, particularly in the U.S., and achieving sustainable, profitable growth in our IP Optical business, and accelerating innovation and capturing cost efficiencies with the full integration of our product teams. Operator, that concludes our prepared remarks, and we can now take a few questions.

Operator (participant)

... Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Christian Schwab with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Christian Schwab (Partner and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Good quarter. So I'm just curious, can you help us on the Metaswitch opportunity? That seems like, like, you know, you talked about it being substantial and Microsoft kind of walking away from the platform. I'm just, you know, is there a dollar installed base that and a percentage of share that you think is reasonable that you could attain, you know, on a go-forward basis? Just any more color regarding, you know, how substantial that opportunity might be.

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Yeah. Hey, Christian. So there's a couple different metrics I think, to look at. You know, there's quite a range. They're deployed in kind of a broad range of smaller regional, rural operators, and then quite a few of the tier two operators. Frankly, places where we're not, they are, sort of thing, right? There's a lot of, you know, kind of distribution across the, the footprint between the two of us. So these deals can range from a few hundred thousand dollars to, you know, several million dollars or larger, depending on the scale and the scope. One of the metrics to look at is the last public filings that Microsoft maintains in the U.K. for that business. And, you know, the just the ongoing maintenance revenue stream is pretty substantial from that installed base.

I forget the exact number, but you know, in the seventy-five million range or more. So you know, I think it's a fairly substantial footprint. Of course, you know, some of that will just you know, continue to operate the way it is. Some of it will get upgraded and replaced, and I can tell you, we get a lot of focus on it. You know, like it's an opportunity that doesn't come along very often to go and capture some of that, that real estate, that footprint.

Christian Schwab (Partner and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. And then my second question has to do with the BEAD program. Sounds like you're seeing some revenue. Nokia, on their conference call, talked about recognizing their first revenue in the December quarter. That seems a little bit earlier than a lot of people were thinking, given the slow start to all the state approvals. Would you expect that 2025, you know, could be a stronger uptake of movement of spending BEAD dollars, or do you think it'll be kind of gradual, and 2026 is the big year?

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Yeah, I think it's gradual, particularly for us, given we're not on the access layer of the network. I am kind of pleased to see the progress, though, over the last few months. I think I was actually doing some reading this morning, and I think there are now nine states that have opened up their grant application windows, and some are already processing applications. And you could even see perhaps the first awards before the end of the year. So that's good progress compared to where we were, say, six months ago. And you know, again, I think the first half is pretty, you know, pretty modest and kind of getting started on the construction portion of some of these programs and then accelerating in the second half.

And again, our piece is a little bit later in the process as they start to build out the interconnectivity in the middle mile portion. But it's good to see the progress finally being made here.

Christian Schwab (Partner and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Fantastic. No other questions. Thank you.

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Thanks, Christian.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Michael Genovese from Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

Michael Genovese (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks so much. Yeah, Bruce, an encouraging quarter, and we go through all of the geographies and the segments. There's really, really promising data points. But I guess, can I just start by asking, you know, where, if anywhere, in the quarter did not go to your expectations? Was there anywhere where you were sort of slightly disappointed by the demand?

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

You know, I'm really pleased with the profitability, obviously, the mix, the margin, the performance of our services team, you know, was really outstanding in the quarter, so it was great to see that come through. You know, obviously, we were $1.5 million or $2 million below the midpoint of guidance, so we were, you know, a couple million shy of where I thought we would be and maybe a few deals in Europe in particular, that you know that could have happened in the quarter. You know, good pipeline for the fourth quarter here, though. Obviously, good momentum and outlook, and you know, the margin mix even a little better in the quarter, so really looking forward to a strong finish.

Michael Genovese (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah. So following up on that, I mean, you know, for the fourth quarter, it really looks like the US is gonna be the star again. But you made positive comments about India as well. I guess, you know, how should we think about Europe in the fourth quarter? Should we think about some positive seasonality, or is there anything showing fundamental signs of improvement in the fourth quarter in Europe?

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Yeah, I think the way I describe that region is really seasonality, the way you just described it. You know, the combination of critical infrastructure and service providers, the service provider piece tending to be a little more seasonal. So I do think we have a, you know, a stronger fourth quarter, which we typically do in that region. The U.S., I think, will be the strongest, you know, region. I think we shifted back to the U.S. being more than 50% of revenue in the third quarter and probably the same in the fourth quarter. And, you know, on India, you know, last year we grew substantially. We were up 30% last year in India.

This year, as I talked about on the last call, we're down about 20% compared to last year, but the fourth quarter will be the strongest quarter of the year. So we've continued to improve as the year progressed, and, you know, with Vodafone Idea beginning to reinvest in their network and build out both 4G and 5G infrastructure, that's good for the whole, you know, vendor community. So, looking forward to a, you know, a stronger year going into next year as well there.

Michael Genovese (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Just a last question from me. I mean, this looking at it from the outside, I mean, I know it's just started, but it looks like maybe the most promising time ever for sort of softswitch architectures, you know, and the, basically your Cloud and Edge business. And maybe I'm not remembering, you know, well enough, sort of, you know, something good that happened ten or twenty years ago in the market. But, I mean, something really fundamental seems to be going on there. Could you is this the best time ever for Cloud and Edge? And why, if so?

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

In that portion of that business, it's certainly the best that I've been here. You know, I think we've gone through some fairly major upgrade cycles in this space back, say, seven, eight years ago, for kind of the first phase of some of the modern softswitch architectures. You know, there's a lot of focus on pulling cost out of the network operation. And, you know, there's a bit of an issue around aging knowledge base, knowledge workers in this space, and so I think the motivation has really picked up. Of course, the other part of our business in this space is around unified communications, deploying session border controller and policy management to support Microsoft Teams and Zoom and those sorts of migrations. And we've had a number of really strong years around that part.

But the whole kind of network infrastructure upgrade process that we're seeing service providers and, you know, U.S. federal agencies go through, it feels pretty unique for sure.

Michael Genovese (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks so much.

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Thanks, Mike.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question comes from the line of Tim Savageaux from Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Tim Savageaux (Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, good afternoon, and congrats on the quarter. I wanted to follow up on your mid-single digit growth guidance, I guess, for calendar 2025, and try and get at some of the moving parts there. Now, obviously, you've seen some declines in IP optical this year. I think you were expecting that to maybe be flat to up. Now, it seems like maybe down single digits. Do you, given the U.S. strength, expect a strong rebound there? You know, then again, you've got a lot going on, big orders and big opportunities in cloud and edge. So I guess, how would you expect the segments to grow around that kind of mid-single digit target? And I'll follow up from there.

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Yeah. Hey, Tim, thank you. So there's a number of moving parts here, obviously, to get to an overall corporate average growth for next year, as you point out. You know, we have been on a approximately 10% per year growth rate on the IP Optical the last few years, with the Eastern European business suspension that we implemented last quarter. year-over-year, going into2025, we have to make up, if you will, the shipments that we had in the first part of the year in that region. And, you know, you can estimate that in the $25 million range. So to grow next year in that business, you know, we've got to kind of make up that amount and then grow from there.

So that gets us to the, you know, kind of mid-single digit range around that business. In the cloud and edge business, voice infrastructure business, you know, a portion of our total revenue there is obviously maintenance revenue, and that tends to be fairly flat year-over-year. So to get to a mid-single digit growth rate around that, we have to grow at a faster rate on the product and service portion. And again, so that the implied growth rate around the product side is actually higher than the mid-single digit range. So between those two kind of pieces of the model, that gets you to an overall average, you know, in the mid-single digit range.

Tim Savageaux (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Thanks. And, I think you'd mentioned in the release and maybe a little bit on the, on the call about pursuing, you know, obviously, you've got the Verizon, voice modernization deal and strong growth there, but pursuing opportunities with, multiple additional carriers. And, you know, I think we can sort of talk about pipelines in several different ways here. Maybe you could try and, you know, quantify those opportunities relative to what you were able to, to land with Verizon. And, you know, I might extend that. You kind of did that with Metaswitch a little bit, at least threw a number out there. If it's possible to, look at the opportunities that are emerging on the IP optical side with the Nokia and Infinera deal, be interesting to get a sense of that pipeline as well.

Address it how you want, but I'm looking for more color on the voice monetization opportunities and then the IP optical opportunities. Thanks.

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Yeah. So on the first one, you know, there's it would be hard to find another opportunity of the same scale as the Verizon project. So that's certainly, you know, the largest in our funnel. We've announced a few other ones that we've been able to talk about publicly, like Brightspeed, we talked about last quarter, as they're modernizing some of their legacy voice infrastructure and migrating off of the Lumen infrastructure as part of that separation. I've talked about some of the projects we have going in Africa with operators like MTN, putting in a new voice interconnect hub into Africa. There's a number in Europe that we haven't talked about publicly yet, that are similar in nature, and then others here in the US.

Obviously, some larger opportunities here to do similar network modernization. I will say that each network is a little bit different. You know, the regions that have deployments in much more rural areas with smaller line counts, those sorts of things, maybe the ROI on upgrading those types of switching platforms isn't there. It makes more sense just to operate them as long as you can. But there's larger ones where it does make sense, and there's a good ROI. So you know, there's a good pipeline of those types of additional service provider opportunities in both North America and in Europe that we're pursuing and will be lined up for next year.

Of course, you add to that the U.S. federal that I commented on quite a bit around those types of opportunities. Very similar, they're building out their own secure communication infrastructure. The DISA project that we announced in the third quarter, basically replacing and modernizing that Softswitch backbone that operates the DoD basically interconnect network for voice communications. Yeah, just a good pipeline of those types of opportunities that are driving growth for the business. The other part of your question around the IP Optical pipeline and comment on the competitive environment.

So certainly, as we saw in the third quarter here with, you know, 20% of our revenue in the U.S. for the first time, you know, we're having good success, particularly in the regional and rural operators, helping build out and add more capacity into the network. We've got a good pipeline for fourth quarter, and I think those programs continue into next year. And then, you know, as the BEAD funding actually starts to move into our portion of the network, you know, I think that is our 2026, 2027 opportunities for us. So, you know, good runway going forward there. The other area we haven't talked too much about in the U.S. is around critical infrastructure. That's a real platform for our business in Europe has not been a big driver so far here in the U.S. We announced American Electric Power earlier this year, sixth largest energy transportation company here in the U.S., that build out their own secure transport and IP routing network, and we're having, you know, a really good program with them this year, helping modernize some of that. So those are, you know, some of the other kind of related opportunities. The Nokia Infinera opportunity specifically, I think takes a little longer time to develop. It's not so much in North America. The opportunities we see are more in Asia Pac and in Europe to some extent.

And typically, it's an operator that has either both of them deployed in the network today or were perhaps, you know, migrating in a particular direction and for whatever reason, you know, aren't sold on the combined roadmap or the strategy there. You know, I think the window of time is, you know, between now and when that closes and they bring together a clearer roadmap. So while that uncertainty is in the market, you know, we're really hustling to go try and find some new wins in that space.

Tim Savageaux (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. And last one for me real quick. I mean, what could Verizon acquiring Frontier mean from you guys from a voice perspective?

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Yeah, I think, you know, that's a real opportunity. I haven't been able to quantify it yet, but, you know, we don't do a lot of voice business there today with Frontier other than some maintenance. They haven't invested a lot in modernizing that portion of their network, been a lot of focus, obviously, on driving fiber, you know, very successfully. I think there's a good possibility Verizon will, you know, look at a similar playbook as they look at the Frontier infrastructure. We won't know that until they're further along in the process, but that's certainly something as we look into, say, the 2026 timeframe, that could be a further catalyst for us.

Tim Savageaux (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks a lot.

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Thanks, Tim.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Trevor Walsh from Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Russ on for Trevor Walsh at Citizens JMP. Thanks for the question. In regards to the impressive triple-digit growth rate year-over-year in IP optical, aside from the cited rural broadband fiber initiatives, you guys talked about the success with the cross-sell motion. Could you just unpack what's kind of the driving that success there?

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Yeah, so I guess two thoughts on that. The rural portion of the business, we think of as cross-sell. Many of these customers, we actually have an installed base of voice infrastructure with them already today, and they're not investing a lot in that, but you know, it's an ongoing support and maintenance and commercial relationship with them. They rely on us to help operate that network, and so it's given us a bit of an unfair advantage in some ways, to be able to go in and compete for this new business as they're investing in these new areas. Many times, the decision makers are the same people that we work with already on the other part of the business, and so that part of the cross-sell has really worked well.

The other part is really being able to use the IP routing technology, the routing platforms that we have, to be able to do replacement of TDM and SONET infrastructure with a broader set of service provider customers. And so we have a pretty active base now of customers that provide interconnect services in the U.S. between the different operators that help interconnect both data traffic and voice traffic. And the cost of these interconnect networks, these traditional TDM networks and SONET networks, is going up, you know, every year, like, disproportionately. And so there's been a lot of interest in using our routers as basically a replacement for doing circuit emulation.

And again, that's a great example of cross-sell, where we've got, you know, a new technology, a new platform that we're going to existing customers and selling into the new space. So several examples like that, Russ, that we're focused on.

That's great. Thanks, Bruce. I think we've heard a lot of answers on Metaswitch and Infinera, but I just wanted to touch on the third competitive dynamic. Any revised thoughts or updates around the HPE, Juniper?

There hasn't been, you know, a lot of new news, if you will, there. You know, Juniper's position in the customer base that we're in today is relatively modest compared to Cisco, Nokia, and Huawei. So there's a few that are in the pipeline there or a couple of smaller wins, Russ, in that space, but not dramatic, so I didn't comment on it this go around.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As there are no further questions, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Bruce McClelland for his closing comments. Bruce?

Bruce McClelland (CEO)

Yeah, thanks very much, Ryan. Thanks again for everybody being on the call and for your interest in Ribbon Communications. We look forward to speaking with many of you in our upcoming investor conferences and keeping you updated on our progress. So, Operator, thanks very much. This concludes our call.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The conference of Ribbon Communications has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.