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Today, Amazon announced that it will acquire eero, a consumer mesh WiFi equipment company that as of 3Q18 had 13% revenue share. In 3Q18, the consumer mesh WiFi market measured just over $150M, which was up just over 34% Y/Y. The number one player by revenue was NETGEAR in 3Q18, followed very closely by Google, who had retained the number one spot for the 5 quarters before 3Q18. Now, with Amazon's acquisition of eero, just three players will have well over 3/4th of the consumer mesh WiFi market. What's interesting here is that two Internet titans, Google and Amazon, are attempting to disrupt the consumer networking market that up till 2015 was dominated by hardware players such as NETGEAR, Linksys, TP-Link, D-Link (consumer WiFi vendors) and adjacent players such as Technicolor, Arris, Huawei, ZTE and Nokia (Broadband Customer Premises Equipment vendors).
So, what does it mean that now both Amazon and Google are battling for primacy in the home networking market? It is complementary to their interactive speaker business. Both Amazon and Google have introduced various hardware products for the home, but most successful have been both of their interactive speaker products, which for Amazon has been the Echo and Dot and for Google Home. These speakers are generally in an "always-on" mode, which allow them to listen to all sounds nearby, and which also means they are generally always connected to the WiFi devices in the home. By always being connected, these speakers consume much of the available WiFi bandwidth in the home, deteriorating the available spectrum for other devices. One obvious solution, which is being made available by wireless chip giant, Qualcomm, is to integrate WiFi chips with speaker chips. That's the direction that both Amazon and Google may pursue - to integrate Home with Google WiFi and Echo with eero. This will mean that multiple WiFi mesh devices will also represent multiple interactive speakers in the home, all while combating the over-use of WiFi spectrum in the home. These Internet giants can, and probably will, attempt to overwhelm the market with low prices, subsidized by primary businesses. We already see that Google's price for a 3-pack is 37% lower than eero's comparable system. Our working theory is that Google has been selling close to no margin and that eero has been experiencing a 30's percent margin. This is probably not good news for the following companies who either do have gross margins above 30% or we assume do, like NETGEAR, TP-Link, D-Link, and others mentioned above.
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 Arris held its annual investor day late last week on March 28, 2018. It was interesting: the company said "Everything is going wireless," which is an interesting admission for a company that, until about a year ago, was essentially a pureplay on wired broadband. To be sure, the company has diversified into wireless with its acquisition of Ruckus and has benefitted from the inclusion of Wi-Fi capabilities to its broadband CPE. The company sees this wireless future - and is pivoting towards it.
Arris management highlighted that it expect its future to include the following growth avenues:
Additionally, the company discussed its expectations for each division, which using its 2017 mix and various projections, calculates to a 4.7% CAGR from '17 to '21. Enterprise Networking (Ruckus). Overall, the company's Enterprise Networking division, also known as Ruckus Networking, includes its Enterprise WLAN business (formerly Ruckus Wireless), the Brocade ICX Ethernet Switch product line (referred to by the company as Campus Switching), and other revenue streams such as CBRS 3.5 Ghz LTE Small Cells, as well as IoT radio modules that plug into the Ruckus Access Points like Bluetooth, LoRa and Zigbee. The company is targeting 20%+ growth for the Ruckus Networking group, which is far above the industry growth rates we expect for Enterprise plus Outdoor WLAN and Campus switching. This aggressive growth rate either implies share-taking, or growth in other products such as CBRS, Bluetooth, LoRa and Zigbee, or the the non-WLAN parts of what used to be Ruckus Wireless, such as Cloud-managed Wireless LAN services (that, for instance compete with Cisco's Meraki, Aerohive services and Mojo Networks). The company cited an expected Enterprise WLAN revenue growth projection slightly above our projection for the period '17 to '21, even if cloud-managed WiFi services were included. Network and Cloud Segment. The company said this market is growing 5% annually, and described the market generally as the Cable Modem Infrastructure, optical nodes and cable video networks market. The company generally expects to take share, compared to this market viewpoint, projecting a 4-7% long-term annual growth expectation for this business segment. It was interesting that the company said that the "mobile device explosion [is] driving offload demand," because it has been several years since "Wi-Fi offload" was a growth driver, but dissecting the comment a bit more, the company is pointing to cable operators as being "well positioned to handle [the] offload." We think Arris' strong supplier position with the major Cable MSOs in the US, especially, may indicate that there should be a strong build up of WiFi and cable infrastructure coming in the future. And, this corroborates with our own research and statements from MSOs such as Comcast. In fact, the company showed a "future" network diagram that indicates it expects its MSO customers will be delivering 5G radio, Remote OLTs (PON) and Fixed Wireless Access instead the of cable modem (DOCSIS) equipment that was indicated in the "now" chart. This implied shift from DOCSIS to PON/5G/FWA would be a dramatic shift in the company's product portfolio. Very interesting, indeed. Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) Segment. The company claims a #1 Set Top Box (STB) market share, and #2 Broadband CPE market share, with a mix of 60% video CPE and 40% broadband revenues in 2017. The company expects to grow broadband CPE to a mix of 50%+ by the year 2021, consistent with the market growth rates it cites - 4% CAGR for broadband and -.8% for video. Generally, the company is projecting long term sales trend of -5% to +1%, indicating that it lacks the direct to market exposure that would get it to a growth expectation in this segment. The company confirmed it is using NBASE-T (Multi-Gigabit Ethernet) interfaces on its home networking devices and it is planning to release 802.11ax capabilities on its portfolio, as well. Arris CPE will also include Extenders / Adapters to, at least partially, address the growth now occurring in the Consumer Mesh market. |
CHRIS DePUY
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