Clearfield focuses on connecting small-town and rural homes

Nov. 27, 2024
Inventory overhang continues to impact the company, but it sees opportunities in the community broadband segment.

Clearfield president and CEO Cheri Beranek said the company is proud of its steady focus on investing and capitalizing on opportunities despite a challenging quarter and fiscal year. The company had consolidated net sales of $46.8 million for its fiscal fourth quarter, a 6% year-over-year decrease. For the entire fiscal year, it had consolidated net sales of $166.7 million, a 38% decrease from 2023.

“We exited fiscal 2024 with stronger customer relationships, launched several new products that reduce deployment time, and optimized our cost and operating structure,” said Beranek. “Our revenue from homes connected continues to grow, and we are encouraged by the positive customer response to our active cabinet solutions.”

Enhancing the product portfolio

Beranek reported that Clearfield is anticipating public and private funding opportunities for rural broadband expansion and will continue to support homes and businesses in rural and small-town communities by providing scalable solutions that cut deployment costs by reducing skilled labor requirements.

“In the past year, we introduced several new products aimed at reducing the cost and time of connecting homes,” she said, “including SeeChange, the CraftSmart FiberFirst Pedestal, the CraftSmart Deploy Reel TAP Box, and the FiberFlex series of active cabinets. We also introduced a 3D interactive fiber installation tool delivered via the BILT mobile app, which simplifies the deployment process.”

Beranek said product releases and investments will continue in 2025 and reported that Clearfield is finalizing the design of a new distributed TAP portfolio, which the company plans to introduce in the coming months.

“While we continue to expect ordering patterns to be impacted by the inventory overhang, we believe that this excess is primarily located at the MSO accounts, while the community broadband segment and large regional providers have mostly recovered and returned to a normal ordering cadence,” said Beranek.

Positioned for growth despite struggles

Dan Herzog, Clearfield’s CFO, reported that, of the quarter’s net sales, $35.7 million was from North America, and $11.1 million was from international markets, a breakdown he attributed to higher sales in both the MSO and large regional service provider markets.

For the full fiscal year, consolidated net sales were $166.7 million, a 38% decrease from $268.7 million in fiscal 2023. Clearfield generated positive cash flow from operations of approximately $12.9 million in the quarter, and $22.2 million in the full fiscal year.

Herzog reported that revenue from homes connected continues to represent a larger portion of overall revenue, a trend the company expects to continue into 2025 and 2026 with BEAD deployments.

“Over the past year, Clearfield has successfully transitioned into an end-to-end portfolio supplier of products for both passing and connecting homes, which has positioned the company for growth consistent with the general industry outlook,” said Herzog.

Herzog reported that, for the 2025 fiscal year, Clearfield anticipates U.S. revenues to grow at or above industry-forecasted levels, while growth from international markets is expected to stagnate.

“Although service providers remain bullish on the utilization of fiber in their build plans, we are currently seeing some level of conservatism on capital spending,” said Herzog. “As a result, we anticipate a somewhat slow start to the year, with our first quarter fiscal 2025 net sales in the range of $33 million to $38 million.”

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About the Author

Hayden Beeson

Hayden Beeson is a writer and editor with over seven years of experience in a variety of industries. Prior to joining Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report, he was the associate editor of Architectural SSL and LEDs Magazine. 

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