Clearfield’s CEO says it sees the Verizon/Frontier merger as a significant opportunity
Key Highlights
- Verizon's acquisition of Frontier significantly expands its fiber footprint, passing over 25 million premises across 31 states and D.C., creating new opportunities for equipment suppliers.
- Clearfield CEO Cheri Beranek sees the merger as a chance to strengthen relationships with the larger provider and support their ambitious fiber deployment plans through 2026.
- Ribbon Communications and other industry players view the merger as an opportunity to expand their infrastructure programs within the combined Verizon-Frontier footprint.
- Community Broadband is experiencing renewed growth, driven by increased planning and deployment activity following delays in the BEAD program, with Clearfield preparing to meet upcoming demand.
- Supply chain constraints, particularly regarding U.S.-made optical fiber, pose near-term challenges, but long-term prospects for BEAD-related projects remain positive as funding and industry efforts progress.
Keep up to date with Lightwave’s Q4 2025 earnings coverage.
You can check our publication’s key segments:
And
Here are other stories on Clearfield:
· Clearfield solidifies a disciplined approach to data centers
· Clearfield charts long-term growth as the industry cadence becomes normalized
· Clearfield’s CEO says the BEAD program is a long-term growth catalyst
Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier, while signaling the consolidation of two key service providers, could create opportunities for existing telecom equipment suppliers like Clearfield.
Having an established relationship with both companies, Clearfield wants to position itself to help the newly combined company, which will have a larger fiber network footprint.
A key part of Verizon's acquisition is scaling its fiber network. Verizon and Frontier have approximately 10 million fiber customers across 31 states and Washington, D.C., with fiber networks passing over 25 million premises.
Frontier’s 2.2 million fiber subscribers across 25 states will join Verizon’s approximately 7.4 million Fios connections in 9 states and Washington, D.C. In addition to Frontier’s 7.2 million fiber locations, the company is committed to building out an additional 2.8 million fiber locations by the end of 2026.
Cheri Beranek, CEO of Clearfield, said she sees Verizon’s completion of the Frontier deal as a way to deepen its relationship with the now larger provider.
“We're looking at the Verizon/Frontier merger as a significant opportunity for Clearfield,” she said. “We have been a key supplier to Frontier, which is full speed ahead on their program for fiscal year '26 and not looking to make any changes that are going to interfere with the build season.”
She added, “Verizon has been in strong support of being very visible in saying the reason they acquired Frontier is because of the strength of their fiber network.”
Beranek is hardly alone in her enthusiasm about the Verizon/Frontier marriage.
Ribbon Communications, which is working with Verizon on a large voice network infrastructure upgrade, sees an opportunity further to entrench itself at Verizon following its acquisition of Frontier.
“With the closure of the Frontier acquisition, there is a significant opportunity to expand the scope of our program across the Frontier footprint over the next several years,” said Bruce McClelland, CEO of Ribbon, during its fourth quarter earnings call.
Community broadband resurgence
From a customer standpoint, Clearfield is seeing new growth patterns in its Community Broadband segment.
The company noted that an increase in its net sales was driven by Community Broadband, which is emerging again following declines due to delays in implementing the BEAD program.
“Execution across our core broadband markets remains steady,” Beranek said. “Community Broadband remains a foundational element of our business, supported by long-standing customer relationships and a portfolio-based approach that emphasizes selling multiple Clearfield solutions across customer deployments.”
Clearfield is taking a more bullish yet cautious outlook on its BEAD prospects for its Community Broadband segment. The company noted the level of planning and network design activity it is seeing from both current and prospective customers, as well as NTIA’s movement to advance the program.
To support customers who have been awarded BEAD funding, Clearfield is focusing on providing solutions at the planning stage, allowing them to allocate resources thoughtfully and remain aligned with customers.
“While we continue to expect modest BEAD-related revenue contribution in fiscal 2026, service providers are actively preparing for deployment,” Beranek said. “Customers are working through planning, network design, and vendor decisions, and Clearfield is staying closely engaged to ensure we are ready when funding is released.”
The company expects community broadband providers to move faster on BEAD projects once funding approvals are granted than the Tier 1 providers.
Despite the potential opportunity, Beranek cautioned that “supply chain constraints of U.S.-made optical fiber that is required under the BABA, the Buy America Act, could restrain near-term deployment, so we are working alongside others in the industry to address the issue.” Beyond fiscal 2026, we expect BEAD to become a positive contributor with timing dependent entirely on federal funding releases and supply chain constraints.”
But broadband is only one part of Clearfield's Community Broadband game.
The company sees an opportunity to sell its new NOVA Platform. This modular, high-density fiber ecosystem targets a mix of customers, including large hyperscale and colocation data centers, enterprise campuses, and broadband central offices.
In the near term, Clearfield will target community broadband customers, building data centers to complement their broadband businesses with an additional revenue stream.
“The initial target customer for NOVA we'll see is existing community broadband customers who are opening data centers for their enhanced revenue base,” Beranek said. “So this would be customers like South Dakota Network or CoreLogic who understand the requirements associated with high density and they're looking at how they're going to be able to do that.”
Cable hits and misses
While its community broadband segment grew in the quarter, Clearfield saw near-term slips in the cable segment.
The cable segment declined in the fourth quarter but was consistent with the first quarter of last year.
Beranek emphasized that the larger cable operators’ order patterns vary during the year.
“What we see in the MSO market is that those orders tend to be at a little bit larger scale, which results in a little bit of lumpiness on a quarter-to-quarter basis,” she said.
She added that regional cable operators like Cable One, Mid Continent, and Blue Ridge Fiber continue to advance their fiber builds because they see fiber migration as a way to build a broadband network that can compete with telcos’ fiber drive. AT&T and Verizon, for example, will have even larger fiber networks upon completing their acquisitions of Lumen’s fiber assets and Frontier.
“Regional cable operators are seeing that fiber does not have the risk that you're going to see from a DOCSIS standpoint; it's a better long-term play,” Beranek said. “And especially as the telcos get aggressive in the deployment of fiber, as Verizon and AT&T continue to build out the MSO market, especially the regionals are ready to respond. So I'm confident you'll see growth in that space as well.”
Community broadband drives sales
Driven by a rise in Community Broadband, which is emerging from the negative overhang that has resulted from years-long delays in the BEAD program, Clearfield’s net sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 were $34.3 million, up 16% from $29.7 million in the prior year period.
As of December 31, 2025, the order backlog was $22.8 million, a decrease of $1.9 million, or 8%, from $24.7 million as of September 30, 2025, and a decrease of $1.0 million, or 4%, from $23.8 million as of December 31, 2024.
Looking towards the second fiscal quarter of 2026, Clearfield anticipates net sales from continuing operations to be in the range of $32 million to $35 million, operating expenses to rise slightly relative to the first quarter, and net loss per diluted share in the range of $0.02 to $0.10.
For the full-year fiscal 2026, Clearfield is reiterating its guidance for net sales from continuing operations in the range of $160 million to $170 million, driven by gains across all customer segments.
“We expect growth to be driven by steady demand for fiber connectivity across our community broadband, large regional, and MSO customers, with BEAD-related revenue contribution expected to remain modest during fiscal 2026,” said Daniel Herzog, CFO of Clearfield.
For related articles, visit the Business Topic Center.
For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.
To stay abreast of fiber network deployments, subscribe to Lightwave’s Service Providers and Datacom/Data Center newsletters.
About the Author
Sean Buckley
Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategy of Lightwave across its website, email newsletters, events, and other information products.