VIAVI Solutions Fiscal Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call - Data center and defense demand lift revenue and margins; acquisitions and restructuring reshape the business

Abby, Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the VIAVI Solutions Fiscal Second Quarter 2026 earnings call. Today’s conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one a second time. Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Vibhuti Nair, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Vibhuti Nair, Head of Investor Relations, VIAVI Solutions: Thank you, Abby. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Viavi Solutions’ Fiscal Second Quarter 2026 earnings call. My name is Vibhuti Nayar, Head of Investor Relations for Viavi Solutions. With me on today’s call is Oleg Khaykin, our President and CEO, and Ilan Daskal, our CFO. Please note, this call will include forward-looking statements about the company’s financial performance. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations and estimations. We encourage you to review our most recent annual report and SEC filings, particularly the risk factors described in those filings. The forward-looking statements, including the guidance that we provide during this call and our expectations regarding the acquired business, are valid only as of today. Viavi undertakes no obligation to update these statements.

Please also note that unless we state otherwise, all results discussed on this call, except revenue, are non-GAAP. We reconcile these non-GAAP results to our preliminary GAAP financials and discuss their usefulness and limitations in today’s earnings release. The release, as well as our supplemental earnings slides, which includes historical financial tables, are available on VIAVI’s website at www.investor.viavisolutions.com. Finally, we are recording today’s call, and we’ll make the recording available on our website by 4:30 P.M. Pacific Time this evening. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Ilan. Ilan?

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Thank you, Vibhuti. Good afternoon, everyone. Now, I would like to review the results of the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. Net revenue for the quarter was $369.3 million, which is at the high end of our guidance range of $360-$370 million. Revenue was up 23.5 sequentially, and on a year-over-year basis was up 36.4%. Operating margin for the second fiscal quarter was 19.3%, above the high end of our guidance range of 17.3%-18.5%. Operating margin increased 360 basis points from the prior quarter, and on a year-over-year basis was up 440 basis points.

EPS at $0.22 was also above the high end of our guidance range of $0.18-$0.20 and was up $0.07 sequentially. On a year-over-year basis, EPS was up $0.09. Moving on to our Q2 results by business segment. NSE revenue for the second fiscal quarter came in at $291.5 million, which is at the high end of our guidance range of $283 million-$293 million. Revenue from Spirent was $43 million, which was slightly below our expectation of $45 million-$55 million due to timing of certain opportunities. On a year-over-year basis, NSE revenue was up 45.8% as a result of the acquisitions of Inertial Labs and Spirent product lines.

We also saw strong demand for lab and production and field products, driven by the data center ecosystem. NSE gross margin for the quarter was 64.7%, which is 10 basis points lower on a year-over-year basis. NSE’s operating margin for the quarter was 15.6%, compared to 8.7% during the same quarter last year. NSE operating margin was above the high end of our guidance range of 12.9%-14.3%, primarily driven by higher flow-through. OSP revenue for the second fiscal quarter came in at $77.8 million, slightly above our guidance range at -- sorry, guidance of about $77 million and was up 9.7% on a year-over-year basis. The increase in revenue for the quarter was primarily a result of strength in anti-counterfeiting and other products.

OSP gross margin was 50.8%, up 20 basis points from the same period last year. OSP’s operating margin was 33.4%, an increase of 100 basis points on a year-over-year basis. OSP operating margin came in slightly below our guidance range of 33.5%-34.5%, due to slightly higher variable costs. Moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow. Total cash and short-term investments at the end of Q2 were $772.1 million, compared to $549.1 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Cash flow from operating activities for the quarter was $42.5 million versus $44.7 million in the same period last year, mainly due to timing of working capital.

CapEx for the quarter was $5.6 million versus $8.2 million in the same period last year. During the quarter, we successfully exchanged principal amount of about $100 million, 1.625% convertible notes due in March 2026, or 7.9 million shares of VIAVI’s common shares at a price per share of $17.88. We have remaining principal amount of about $50 million on these notes, which will be paid in cash. The associated premium on these convertible notes will be settled in shares. Additionally, we prepaid in January 2026, $100 million of the $600 million Term Loan B. This is in line with our continued financial discipline.

During the quarter, we did not purchase any shares of our stock as we prioritized our capital allocation towards debt management. The fully diluted share count for the quarter was 233.4 million shares, up from 224.8 million shares in the prior year, and versus 228.7 million shares in our guidance for the second fiscal quarter. Last week, we approved a restructuring and workforce reduction plan to improve operational efficiencies and better align workforce and resources with our current business needs and strategic priorities. We expect approximately 5% of our global workforce to be impacted and estimate to incur approximately $32 million of restructuring charges in connection with this plan. Upon completion of this initiative, we expect annual savings of about $30 million, which will mainly benefit our operating expenses.

We intend to reinvest a portion of these savings with higher growth areas of our business. We expect to recognize majority of these charges by the end of June 2026, with a plan to be substantially completed by the end of December 2026. The savings of about $30 million include previously communicated $16 million of synergies from the acquisition of Spirent’s product lines. Moving on to our guidance for the third quarter of fiscal 2026. We expect the third fiscal quarter revenue for VIAVI to be up sequentially as a result of continued strength in many of our end markets. For NSE, we expect quarter-over-quarter revenue to be higher as a result of continued strong demand for lab and production and field products, which is driven by the data center ecosystem, as well as aerospace and defense customers.

Our guidance for the third quarter also includes full 13 weeks of Spirent product lines versus 10 weeks in the prior quarter. For OSP, we expect quarter-over-quarter revenue to be higher, in line with seasonality of higher demand for anti-counterfeiting and other products. For the third fiscal quarter of 2026, we expect VIAVI revenue in the range of $386-$400 million. We expect total NSE revenue between $304 and $316 million. OSP revenue is expected to be in the range of $82-$84 million. Operating margin for VIAVI is expected to be 19.7%, ±50 basis points. NSE operating margin is expected to be 15.5%, ±50 basis points.

OSP operating margin is expected to be 35.3%, ±50 basis points. EPS is expected to be between $0.22 and $0.24. Our tax expense for the third quarter is expected to be around $9 million, ±$500,000, as a result of jurisdictional mix. Our acquisition of Spirent product lines, as well as Inertial Labs, has resulted in greater profits in the U.S., which allows us to benefit from our NOLs. As a result, we now expect our tax rate to be in the mid-teens on a go-forward basis. We expect other income and expense to reflect a net expense of approximately $12.5 million, and the share count is expected to be around 245 million shares.

During the third quarter, we expect to pay earnout liability for Inertial Labs of about $75 million as a result of their strong performance in calendar 2025. With that, I will turn the call over to Oleg. Oleg?

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Thank you, Elon. The second quarter of fiscal 2026 came in at the high end of our guidance, driven by strong growth in many of our end markets. The results were significantly up both year-on-year and quarter-over-quarter. NSE revenue in Q2 grew approximately 46% year-over-year, primarily driven by strong demand from the data center ecosystem and aerospace and defense customers. The data center ecosystem, which includes high-performance semis, optical modules, and NEMs, drove strong demand for lab and production products in support of AI data center build-out. In addition, we are now also seeing emerging strong demand for our fiber field instruments by hyperscalers and service providers to build, operate, and optimize the next generation of fiber networks to interconnect the data centers.

The Q2 quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth was also helped by the acquisition of Spirent’s HSC product line, which came in slightly below our expectations due to the timing of several opportunities. Given strong and growing customer demand, we expect the data center ecosystem revenue momentum to continue through the calendar 2026. Our aerospace and defense business also saw another strong quarter of growth, driven by continued high demand for our positioning, navigation, and timing products. We expect this trend to continue through the rest of the calendar year. The service providers business was generally stable during the quarter. We are seeing some opportunistic demand from the cable operators as they transition to new DAA architecture and Access 4.0 standards. The demand for wireless infrastructure test continues to be weak but stable.

Looking ahead to Q3, we expect NSE revenue to be countercyclically up quarter-on-quarter, driven by continued strong and growing demand from data center and aerospace and defense customers. Now turning to OSP. OSP saw strong year-on-year growth, driven mostly by recovery and anti-counterfeiting and other products. 3D sensing demand was in line with seasonal expectations. We expect fiscal Q3 to be up quarter-on-quarter, in line with the seasonally higher demand for anti-counterfeiting and other products. In summary, calendar 2025 was a pivotal year for Viavi. Our diversification and investment strategy over the past five years, focus on data center and aerospace and defense PNT applications, has positioned us well to ride strong growth in both of these markets. We have exited calendar 2025 with robust bookings and revenue momentum and anticipate these trends to continue through the calendar year.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the VIAVI team for its continued strong innovation and execution, and thank our customers and shareholders for their continued support. With that, I will turn it back over to the operator for Q&A.

Abby, Conference Operator: Thank you. We’ll now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one a second time. If you’re called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. To be able to take as many questions as possible, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Again, it is star one if you would like to join the queue. Our first question comes from the line of Ruben Roy with Stifel. Your line is open.

Ruben Roy, Analyst, Stifel: Thank you. I, Oleg and Ilan, congrats on, the continued progress and results. Oleg, to start, last quarter, you, broke out for us a little bit, you know, sort of the mix, as your, NSE business continued to evolve. So thinking about it in terms of data center, aerospace and defense and telco, if you could, give us an update on the what, what the mix looks like, and then, you know, as we think about the guidance, if you could kind of, dial in a little bit, into the moving parts on the growth for, the March quarter, that’d be great. Thank you.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Sure. So, you know, I think, you know, last quarter, we kinda talked 45% service provider, 40% data center, 15% aerospace and defense. I think with the significant growth in data center, right, and the other, I think we are now, I’d say, closer the other way around, 40% service provider, 45% data center, around 15% aerospace and defense. To be more precise, I think we’re going to see, you know, service provider to kind of trend a little bit below 40%. The aerospace and defense trend up above 15%, and the data center trend up about 45%. And it’s not because the service provider is going down. Actually, it’s steady and showing slight recovery.

It’s just fundamentally the percentage allocation and the growth across different segments is vastly different. So that’s kind of the mix. So I think now we are... I’ll say we’re, you know, net of it, we’re now only about 40%, a little bit under 40%, exposed to service provider, additional telecom service provider. And I’d say 60% is driven by the data center ecosystem and the aerospace and defense. In terms of the guidance on the Q3 that you’ve seen pretty strong numbers, it’s continued, very strong growth in the data center ecosystem. That’s again, semis, modules, systems.

And the NEMs, but also it includes a growing component of our traditional field instruments, and it’s actually a meaningful pop in that we’re, you know, we’re now seeing the what I call next gen service providers who are doing interconnect of data centers, and the data center operators themselves investing into our fiber monitoring and fiber measurement systems to monitor and optimize performance of their data centers. And I mean, you know, if I looked at a year ago, you might have been single digits data center for our traditional field instruments. I think we are now looking at about a third of our revenue in the field instruments coming out from data center.

So it’s been a truly, amazing, you know, turnaround, and I think the recognition is growing that the fiber networks are generally crap, and they need to be significantly improved. And, we are seeing, a lot of pressure from the hyperscalers on service providers to improve the performance, but they’re also going further, and they’re putting a lot of, what we call monitoring and, policing on their networks to ensure that they pay for what they-- they get, what they pay for. So it’s actually, been another very positive development for us on the, fiber instruments. That’s on the NSE.

Ruben Roy, Analyst, Stifel: Thanks, Oleg. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I had a follow-up on that. You know, obviously with, you know, Corning and Meta, you know, sort of, expanding their partnership and, you know, $6 billion commitment on new fiber, I would imagine that that’s, you know, something that, you know, would play into your longer term, opportunity set, you know, for the field instruments. But I guess if I, if I think about that, and I-- you made a statement, Oleg, on your prepared remarks regarding, your expectations for DC growth to continue through 2026. I mean, are things like that and, you know, like the scale across opportunities that you just mentioned, giving you extended visibility on demand relative to, you know, sort of what the order book might have looked like, you know, 12 months ago?

I mean, are you, are you getting a longer look on, on backlog and bookings at this point?

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: The answer is yes. I think on these truly big ones, I mean, as you, as you’ve seen with the Corning deal, right? It’s another example of what I’ve been talking about, that the hyperscalers are no longer content, just pay you the money, and you deliver the services and products. They are vertically integrating all the way back into their supply chain through either partnerships or strategic alliances like what you’ve seen with Corning and Meta. And we’re seeing similar thing happening with us, where you have a you know, at the very least, multi-quarter commitments and multi-year engagements. And you know, so when it comes to data center, I would say for us, traditionally, we only had, like, maybe one, one and a half quarter visibility.

We have a pretty good view, at least on the base demand from these type of activities, up to three quarters ahead.

Ruben Roy, Analyst, Stifel: Got it. If I could sneak one in for Oleg, just on the restructuring, Oleg. Is that impacting any specific product area or group, or you know, is this just sort of your annual, you know, look at the business? And you know, obviously there’s a lot going on in D.C. and aerospace and defense that maybe you want to focus more on. Is you know, maybe you could if you could help us out on how to think about that restructuring, that’d be great. And that’s it. Thank you.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Yeah. So Ruben, thanks for the question. Generally, it’s across multiple functions just to make sure that we operate, you know, under a much higher efficiency. So it’s not targeting, you know, specific areas. And I wanted also to highlight that some of these savings, we do plan to reinvest in those higher growth areas that Oleg just discussed. So some of it will be a trade-off.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Yeah, I think, you know, clearly, if we look at where most of the cost is coming out, it’s coming out of the slower or stagnant product segments. So it’s really point here is to free up resources and take some of it as the financial leverage, but others as the ability to invest and grow the... put more wood behind the arrow on things like Data Center Ecosystem, aerospace and defense, things like that.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Right. And in addition to some support function optimization.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Mm-hmm.

Abby, Conference Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Brian Koonce with Needham. Your line is open.

Brian Koonce, Analyst, Needham: Great. Thanks. A lot of activity in defense and aerospace of late. Oleg, I hope you could double click on, you know, what you see as exciting, you know, defense programs, aerospace programs that you’re involved in with your product lines, and how you think about that business going forward.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Sure. I think the biggest driver is what we call resilient PNT, position, navigation, timing. In essence, it’s alternative GNSS, so everything that allows you to operate in the absence of GPS signal. And as you can imagine, it’s drones, drones, and more drones. It’s very much targeting all autonomous systems like drones above ground, you know, robotic vehicles, you know, surveillance, you know, in heavy industrial machinery, undersea, and seaborne drones. So it’s pretty much anything that’s above ground, underground, you know, the underwater, in the air, robotic systems. So that’s mainly where a lot of these products are going to.

On the other hand is also our PNT timing is, you know, we are seeing emerging opportunities in data centers because you, we’re seeing more and more as you increase the speeds in the data centers, you need accurate timing for synchronization. And if you think about traditional distributed clock model, from one end goes across all the racks, that may be fine when you’re 100 gig data center. When you’re going to 1.6, 3.2, the latency becomes unbearable. So we are looking at, we’re seeing demand for timing in at multiple entry points into the data center, so you almost deliver precise timing directly to the rack for the individual server banks.

We see that business as, you know, I would say, gaining longer term momentum, particularly in the data center. But I would say in short-term and near-term opportunities is very strong growth in the drone systems.

Brian Koonce, Analyst, Needham: Great, thank you.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: But also our traditional avionics communication and the, you know, spectrum management is also seeing a lot of opportunities.

Brian Koonce, Analyst, Needham: Great. Thank you for that. And in the optical domain, you talked a lot about strength in data center, driving out performance here. You know, any evidence you can share with us around, you know, the cadence of, you know, optical innovation, getting to 1.6T broadly within the data center, between the data centers, where are you seeing the most demand for your products, and what are maybe some new areas of growth, some green shoots that you’re excited about in the optical data center domain?

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Well, I’d say every segment we see growing. I mean, clearly, the semiconductors or memory vendors that they are driven by speed and the version of PCI Express, which is chip-to-chip interconnect, right? So and I mean, today we are moving from 800 to 1.6, from PCIe 5 to 6.0, and then 7.0. So there is very heavy engagement with the semiconductor vendors from, you know, big ASICs to optical ICs development. Then, so that’s kind of where you bring in the bleeding edge product for lab. And then the volume really comes in as they those things go into production into the with the module vendors.

You know, you know, 1,000 or so companies in Asia making pluggables and of course, the big leaders in North America for cross points, which is optical switches, and various modules. And then all the NEMs who are providing equipment into these data centers. So, I would say there’s 2 groups. One is the lab, heavily driven, I’d say, everything to do with 1.6 and PCI Express 6.0. And in production, heavily with all of our things making, you know, anything from testing passive and active components to the final product, but also including testing fiber. We’re now seeing emergence of Hollow Core Fiber and Multi-Core Fiber.

This is a whole new thing, and that’s why, you know, part of the reason you see companies like, you know, Meta investing directly in the making long-term agreements with the fiber providers is to get, you know, exactly develop these kind of products. And those things require a lot of testing and monitoring and in production and final test. So it’s a, I mean, it’s like I would say, every cylinder in this whole fiber value chain is, I’ll say, firing on all, at full speed.

Brian Koonce, Analyst, Needham: That’s broadly stronger in the lab today than field?

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: It’s what we call lab and production.

Brian Koonce, Analyst, Needham: Yeah.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: But I would say starting last quarter, we are seeing what we normally call field is becoming a, I mean, the hyperscalers themselves. So it’s the actual data center is becoming a huge user of field instrumentation. I mean, for example, when you would go to the traditional fiber service providers, they never really care about putting in monitoring of the fiber. Well, if you go to one of these AI data centers, you see at the edge, they want to monitor every incoming, you know, wavelength, right? And they light up or dark fiber. So they know as they turn on or up the bandwidth, they know exactly characterization and bandwidth and latency they’re gonna get out of each fiber strand. And of course, there is a SLA agreements, service level agreements there they signed with the service providers.

So they are monitoring that these things are coming in at, within a very narrow, spec, and they maintain the narrow spec of performance in every fiber. And that’s a big departure from the old-fashioned, "Well, you know, it works. It’s good enough. If it’s a little bit, you know, lossy or has a higher latency, so what?" Well, that’s not something that these guys accept. And the beauty of it is, they’re deploying these things directly. It’s using the same fiber tools that which were developed for traditional service providers. They are really finding converts among the hyperscalers. And that usually means when they deploy it, there’s a lag, maybe by a couple quarters before the service providers recognize, "Oh, wait a second, I’m not being measured, so I better measure myself."... because before I get nailed for my performance problem.

So we see it as a very positive trend to ensure a very high, resilient, fiber network interconnecting the data centers.

Tim Savageaux, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Okay, that’s great. Thank you.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Sure.

Abby, Conference Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Spinello with UBS. Your line is open.

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Thanks. Oleg, can you expand on that a little and give us maybe some color on how your data center business breaks down across lab, production, and field?

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: You know, we don’t break those things individually because given any quarter, the mix may be a bit, you know, up or down. Because think about it, right? If you’re really launching 1.6, let’s say, or PCIe 6.0, 7.0, you will see initially big mix in towards the lab instruments. As these chips get rolled out and they go into production, you’re gonna see a lot more production. So it’s kind of a tick-tock type of thing. So it makes, that’s why we don’t really break these things down within that category. We just call it generally data center ecosystem, which includes semis, module systems, and field instruments that are used in data centers themselves.

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Makes sense. I’m thinking about how to model that business into, like, fiscal 2027 and beyond. And I wanted to ask you, this might be wrong based on what you just said, but I thought we think about lab as being maybe more consistent as the customers continue to invest in the next generation, fiber monitoring growing as the number of data centers grow. But maybe production being more cyclical and having some bigger swings up and down as various generations get introduced. Trying to think about how I should think about production, assuming that’s a bigger growth driver right now, how to think about how that evolves over a cycle?

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: So it’s a good question. So lab instruments are driven by number of customers and number of projects, right? And ultimately, it relates you best way to look at is the R&D CapEx at semis, system vendors, and module vendors, right? The production is heavily driven by volume that is demanded, right? And you could see the volume of pluggables and the racks and all this. I mean, that is a but, you know, if I look at where are you gonna see higher percentage of growth, it’s clearly, clearly gonna be the production. Because it’s you know, as you increase number of units you build in every generation, and, and let’s say, every node, and that, that’s you need to basically, for every tranche of volume, you need to increase capacity.

So it’s heavily linked to the, I would say, production run rate, okay? And the, I would say, field instruments is, I’d say, linked to the number of data centers being built.

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Got it. Got it. Okay, that, that’s very helpful.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Probably, we think about the longevity of this cycle is probably-

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Yeah, and from what I see in terms of the, you know, pretty much every ounce of capacity that was kind of abandoned by service providers when they cut back about three years ago on investment, it’s been totally repurposed into the data center, and it’s a fraction of what they need and where they. If you take all their announcements, how much they’re gonna spend, how much they’re gonna invest, what you have in terms of production capacity, you’re gonna see significant growth over the next two years, right? And of course, to keep up with it, you need to keep introducing. We now see the new each technology nodes turning over every two years.

So you no longer, let’s say, between 100 gig and 400 gig, you had 6 years. You really now have 2 years between, you know, 1.6 and 3.2.

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Got it. Makes sense. I wanna ask one financial question, just on the, the NSE op margin guide. I guess it’s roughly flat from fiscal Q2 to Q3. Could you give me maybe some of the, the push and pulls on that, given the, the revenue’s up $20 million?

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Yeah, operating margins are - Are you asking gross margin, operating margin, or?

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: I’m sorry, the guide for the NSE op margin, Ilan, is for essentially flat sequentially from Q2 to Q3.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Operating. Operating.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Because he talks operating margin.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Right.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: It is operating.

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Operating, yeah.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Up, yeah.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Right. So your question, the dynamic of the higher operating margin or?

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Oh, I guess the guide for the NSE op margin is 15.5%.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: About that, right.

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Right.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: So-

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Flat. Revenue’s up $20 million. I was just curious if there are some-

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Right

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: mix or anything that’s cutting.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: So there is some obviously, mix, associated with it, and but also in terms of the operating expenses, remember that in the first calendar quarter, all the kind of what we call fringe expenses, like Social Security, et cetera, get reinstated. So you get a higher operating expenses in the first calendar quarter.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: You approve all the statutory costs.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Relating to December. So that’s cost, that’s a major kind of gap between the last quarter and this quarter.

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Got it.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: It’s call it seasonality.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Yeah.

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Yeah.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Statutory costs.

Andrew Spinello, Analyst, UBS: Thank you.

Abby, Conference Operator: As a reminder, it is star one if you would like to ask a question. Our next question comes from the line of Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Tim Savageaux, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Hey, good afternoon, and congrats on the results, and especially the guide. I wanted to kind of focus in on that a bit. I guess I’ll let you describe it as countercyclical. You know, you usually see declines, but I guess I’d like to try and parse out. You got 13 weeks of Spirent, you know, at your Q1 run rate or, sorry, at your December quarter, I’ll just say run rate. That gets you to about, I don’t know, $55 million, sort of the high end of where you were, where you got it last quarter. Is that a reasonable assumption to try and get to Spirent contribution versus organic growth in fiscal Q3?

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: So, Tim, I can chime in here and, you know, in terms of the thinking. So first, for last quarter, in the very first few weeks of the quarter, they actually did not have much revenue. The second aspect to call out, and I think, you know, we did discuss it in the past several times. When you think about the seasonality for the Spirent business, usually the first half of the calendar year is the weaker part, and the stronger part is the second half of the calendar year. So, it’s a little bit lower than you’re thinking, you know, for Spirent, the March quarter.

But again, that does not change our full year thinking about the revenue for Spirent, so not much of change in terms of what we see in the dynamics of their forecast and thinking.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Yeah, generally, they always had first half of the calendar year was lower, second half was stronger. Now, last quarter, there were some government orders that got pushed out into this quarter between the shutdown and, of course, you know, this one-time, grant to the government employees of Christmas holidays. I mean, there basically was fewer days between middle of December and the end of December to get the, orders placed. So some of the volume actually pushed out into the March quarter. As a result, we expect March quarter relatively to be stronger for them than it normally would have been, and the December quarter was a bit weaker than it normally would have been.

Tim Savageaux, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Right. Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m trying to get to, is, you know, to the continuation of this organic growth, and sounds like I’m a little high with my first pass and, you know, I think it was a $200 million run rate you were looking for. And if it’s stronger in the first and the second, I’d, I’d imagine it’s, it’s below that $50 million level. And if that’s the case, you know, you’re looking at mid-single digit sequential growth organically for Viavi in Q1, in a normally seasonally down quarter and coming off 15% sequential growth in the December quarter. So that’s pretty extraordinary.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: That’s right, so-

Tim Savageaux, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: What’s driving all that? Am I looking at that right, number one, and what’s wrong?

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: No, no, you’re, you’re looking exactly right. So remember, the old, I’d say old VIAVI before data center, aerospace and defense, we were heavily influenced by service provider dynamics. And the days when service providers were over 80% of NSE, remember, first quarter is they don’t release their budgets for the year until the end of February. So as a result, you would have a very weak NSE quarter. By the way, service provider is no different again than it was normally. There’s always... It is seasonally weaker, but the strength in the data center, aerospace, defense, and also the Spirent business is not only offsetting, it’s actually more than offsetting. That’s why the net net, the quarter is gonna be up for NSE.

Tim Savageaux, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Okay, makes sense. And one final piece of that question, which is, you know, Again, going back historically, you’d typically see a nice seasonal uptick, at least on the service provider side, in your fiscal Q4. Should we assume that’s a genuine directionally true for the business? Are there any changes as your mix and exposure becomes more aerospace, you know, defense, and AI data center driven, what does that do to that normally stronger Q2? Sorry, fiscal Q4, especially in light of the strength of your, your March quarter guide?

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: That’s right. So actually, as much as there may be the service providers, a bit of a headwind this quarter, they’re gonna be tailwind next quarter. So with a continued strength in data center and aerospace and defense, you’re actually gonna have a tailwind also on the service provider. Our expectation that the June quarter is gonna be stronger than the March quarter.

Tim Savageaux, Analyst, Northland Capital Markets: Awesome. Thanks again. Congrats.

Ilan Daskal, CFO, VIAVI Solutions: Thank you.

Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, VIAVI Solutions: Sure, thanks.

Abby, Conference Operator: That concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to Vibhuti Nair for closing remarks.

Vibhuti Nair, Head of Investor Relations, VIAVI Solutions: Thank you, Vibhuti. Thank you, Abby. This concludes our earnings call for today. Thank you for joining, and have a good afternoon.

Abby, Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s call, and thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.