Our Takeaways from CommScope Second-Quarter 2017 Earnings Call

The CommScope Second-Quarter earnings call was interesting, more so due to what they couldn’t report as opposed to what they did report. Here are our five takeaways from the call:

• FTTX is being deployed – just not being connected. Fiber to the “X”:  To their knowledge, fiber is being passed by residences but isn’t being connected yet. We suspect that this is a reference to AT&T actively passing homes and residences to meet their FCC commitment of 12.5M residences passed.
• First Net is not here yet. No material orders yet for First Net equipment.
• MSOs and MNOs are being more cautious on spending. CommScope expects longer, steadier deployments of infrastructure, as MSOs (cable) and MNOs (wireless) seem to be more cost efficient in their spending.
• 2017 won’t be Commscope’s year. 2018 seems to be a better year.
• CommScope sees the addressable small cell market as indoors. With the Airvana acquisition and just the initial rollouts of OneCell, CommScope is focused on indoors.

CommScope handled itself well during the call, answering questions fairly directly (for an earnings call). They addressed the elephant in the room – AT&T timing – repetitively during the call without actually referring to AT&T. Look for better guidance on a number of fronts this coming quarter.