ADTRAN – ADTRAN & ADVA Business Combination Conference Call, August 30, 2021
There’s kind of a land grab going on right now, and the person that gets there first wins. That land grab is not just because of the market opportunity created by all this stimulus, but it’s because of the displacement of Eastern vendors out of that market. For us to capitalize on longer term and maximizing—and I think the difference is huge thus far. Another 5% market share or 10% market share, as it plays itself out over the next five to 10 years, it’s monumental in size to be able to move the needle that far.
I think it’s similar here in the U.S. Honestly, I think in some spaces, in the Tier 3 spaces, it’s probably not as large yet, but I think you’re going to see a similar thing happen in the U.S. where ADVA just didn’t have the same relationship profiles as we’ve been able to build over the years. I think they’re very complementary that way.
I’m going to let Brian speak a little bit to the market growth in the metro market itself. But like I said before, I think everything that we’re connecting 10-gig to, and it’s almost like—I hate to say it, but common sense. Anything that we’re now upgrading from 100-meg to 10-gig is going to need a comprehensive lift in capabilities. If we have a software, SDN-controlled, disaggregated end-to-end solution, we will be in an incredible competitive space, and I think the market opportunity itself is just now opening up.
I think the timing is actually what drives it. It’s not so much—we can get solid growth without it. I’m very confident in that, and you know how I feel about that. But I think the ability to capitalize and really become that second vendor or maybe even first vendor in the space, doesn’t present itself all the time. It’s time for us, if we were going to do it, there’s not a better time to do it than right now, right before the market is really blossoming. That’s the thought.
Brian, any other comments on that?
Brian Protiva
Yes, I’d like to make a few comments.
When you look at ADVA, why is this deal supportive? The clear answer for me is converged access. We’re very, very strong in business access, both from a packet perspective but also from an optical perspective. Timing plays into that very well, including 5G. The whole fronthaul, midhaul, backhaul opportunity, so there is huge leverage that we can get from the common solutions to attack what I see as converged access going forward. There’s a lot of leverage between the two, because it’s not metro optical and access, it’s about where the markets are going and how we’re going to combine our technologies to lead.
The second point, yes, we are also exposed to (inaudible) and government funding. As Tom said, Tom’s going to do wonders for our opportunity we’re already pursuing and have some good opportunities, but that multiplies. The same is true in Europe, as Tom stated. I just want to restate what he said, is that our breadth and capability to drive their products into many more opportunities in Europe is very good, so again, complementary.
You’ll see us driving, what Tom said, this whole open disaggregate architecture, based—SDN, lots of software, but you’ll see, as we move forward, there’s a huge amount of leverage between the two companies. As we move—and this will go true for some of the stuff that we do on also optical modules that will fit very nicely in the combined architecture that we will be offering to customers. There’s immediate, last-mile, mid-mile, but there’s much more to the story going forward with a $250 million R&D spend that Tom and Christoph will be able to leverage to invest aggressively to win to get stronger.
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