Harmonic Inc. is selling off its cable access business to Aurora Networks Inc. for US$46 million, a move that will help Harmonic focus on higher-margin products, including video processing gear, edge QAMs and its budding Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP).
The product line Harmonic is selling off primarily involves outside plant equipment, including optical transmitters, amplifiers, receivers and nodes. Harmonic said cable access was its lowest gross margin product line (30 percent) and generated $52.9 million in net revenues for 2012.
Harmonic's board has approved a $35 million share repurchase program that is contingent on the close of the deal, which is expected in the current quarter. It was not immediately known how many Harmonic employees will be joining Aurora.
Why this matters
For Harmonic, the sale will let it sharpen its focus on product areas where it believes it has the most sizeable opportunities. During its fourth-quarter earnings call last month, CEO Patrick Harshman identified two key areas for growth: UltraHD encoding and CCAP, a next-generation cable access platform that will combine the edge QAM and cable modem termination system (CMTS) functions and prepare MSOs for an all-IP service transition. Harmonic says its first-generation CCAP product is in tests with at least five Tier 1 customers, with sales expected to start in the second half of 2013.
For privately held Aurora, meanwhile, the deal should complement its own product line, and continue a recent string of acquisitions that has helped the company fill in gaps in its broadband access portfolio and expand its stable of customers. (See Aurora Buys Piece of Enablence.)
For more
re: Harmonic Sells Cable Access Unit for $46M Good point. That would certainly explain some of Harmonic's reasoning beyond the product synergy (or lack thereof) that Harshman got into during the call. JB
jtombes, User Rank: Light Beer 2/19/2013 | 10:34:17 PM
re: Harmonic Sells Cable Access Unit for $46M Guessing this has been in the works for a while, but it looks as if HLIT's sale of cable access and the buy-back answers some of the concerns raised by large shareholder Voce Capital. Stock buy-back in particular.
re: Harmonic Sells Cable Access Unit for $46M Harmonic President & CEO Patrick Harshman offered some additional details on the conf. call this morning.-á HLIT's access business has about 70 employees.-á
As part of the deal Harmonic has agreed to offer "transition services" to Aurora for up to five months. "You would expect the headcount to be in transition over that period of time," Harshman said. -áHarshman also said HLIT put the unit up for sale about 6 months ago and had multiple suitors interested.-á-á-áWithout the access biz, HLIT expects gross margins to rise 2% to 3%. Cable will-áremain its largest-ámarket. JB
NFV's promises of automation and virtualization are intriguing, but what really excites service providers is the massive amount of money they could save.
Six different communications service providers join to debate their visions of the future CSP, following a landmark presentation from AT&T on its massive virtualization efforts and a look back on where the telecom industry has been and where it's going from two industry veterans.
It's an art and a science to make mentorship, inclusive leadership, diversity and promotion of high-potential women work, says Honore' LaBourdette, vice president of Global Market Development at VMWare.
A recap of the week's talking points on Light Reading's sister site, telecoms.com. Facebook AI programmers had a bit of a brain-fade as they allowed one of its AI applications to invent its ...
Supporting women both inside and outside of Fujitsu is a top priority of the telecom vendor. Yanbing Li, Fujitsu Network Communication's director of System Software Development & Delivery, shares why it's important, but why there's still a long road ahead.
In case you missed it, Amazon's 1% stock increase helped Jeff Bezos dethrone Bill Gates as the richest man in the world. Also, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer
AT&T is focused on the software-defined network of the future and is reskilling its workforce to get ready too, according to AT&T's President of Technology Development Melissa Arnoldi.
Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Computing System Product Group, shares why mentoring in all its forms is important for women and what Cisco is doing that's made a difference for women in tech.
At an event in Wembley stadium, EE used its live network to demonstrate gigabit LTE using a Sony Xperia XZ Premium smartphone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip.
Guavus unites big data and machine intelligence, enabling many of the the largest service providers in the world to save money and drive measureable revenue. Learn how applying Machine Intelligence substantially reduces operational costs and in many cases can eliminate subscriber impact, meaning a better subscriber experience and higher NPS.
When used to analyze operational data and to drive operational decisions, machine intelligence reduces the number of tasks which require human intervention. Guavus invested in Machine Intelligence early. Learn about the difference between Machine Learning and Machine Intelligence.
Ray Watson, vice president of global technology at Masergy, discusses the advantages and challenges in entering the still-maturing NFV market for the past three years.
A recap of the week's talking points on Light Reading's sister site, telecoms.com. Facebook AI programmers had a bit of a brain-fade as they allowed one of its AI applications to invent its ...
In case you missed it, Amazon's 1% stock increase helped Jeff Bezos dethrone Bill Gates as the richest man in the world. Also, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer
At an event in Wembley stadium, EE used its live network to demonstrate gigabit LTE using a Sony Xperia XZ Premium smartphone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip.
Guavus unites big data and machine intelligence, enabling many of the the largest service providers in the world to save money and drive measureable revenue. Learn how applying Machine Intelligence substantially reduces operational costs and in many cases can eliminate subscriber impact, meaning a better subscriber experience and higher NPS.
When used to analyze operational data and to drive operational decisions, machine intelligence reduces the number of tasks which require human intervention. Guavus invested in Machine Intelligence early. Learn about the difference between Machine Learning and Machine Intelligence.
Hossam Salib, VP of Cable and Wireless Strategy at ADTRAN, outlines key trends as MSOs begin to deploy next-generation Gigabit and 10-Gigabit cable networks. In the interview, Hossam outlines the advantages of a Fiber Deep architecture, FTTH options including EPON and RFoG, and the importance of SDN and NFV in building next-generation high-bandwidth cable networks.
Dave Smargon of AIRSYS explains how doing smart things with air handling and air conditioning can enable cable to take big steps in the right direction with respect to efficiency gains.
Viavi's Koji Okamoto discusses CATV technology and trends with Alan Breznick of Light Reading. From DOCSIS 3.1 deployment to the impact of Distributed Access Architectures (DAA), bringing fiber closer to the home, and leveraging DWDM technology for business services.
At ANGA COM 2017, Cyrille Morelle, president and CEO of VeEX, updates Alan Breznick with VeEX's new products and technology. This includes VeSion cloud-based platform for network monitoring, AT2500-3G advanced spectrum analyzer and MTTplus-900 WiFi Air Expert module. He also comments on DOCSIS 3.1 deployment and Remote PHY technology.
SCTE•ISBE's Chris Bastian discusses Energy 2020's success to date and the importance of a flexible approach that allows for changes in specific strategies in order to reach significant milestones.
Versa CEO Kelly Ahuja discusses with Carol Wilson the current status and trends in the SD-WAN market, Versa's innovation around building a software platform with broad contextualization, and the advantages that startups can bring to the SD-WAN market.
ARRIS's John Ulm says a major accomplishment of SCTE•ISBE's Energy 2020 program is increased focus on power cost and consumption, including inclusion of energy requirements in operators' RFPs and RFIs.
With the mobile ecosystem becoming increasingly vulnerable to security threats, AdaptiveMobile has laid out some of the key considerations for the wireless community.
Understanding the full experience of women in technology requires starting at the collegiate level (or sooner) and studying the technologies women are involved with, company cultures they're part of and personal experiences of individuals.
During this WiC radio show, we will talk with Nicole Engelbert, the director of Research & Analysis for Ovum Technology and a 23-year telecom industry veteran, about her experiences and perspectives on women in tech. Engelbert covers infrastructure, applications and industries for Ovum, but she is also involved in the research firm's higher education team and has helped colleges and universities globally leverage technology as a strategy for improving recruitment, retention and graduation performance.
She will share her unique insight into the collegiate level, where women pursuing engineering and STEM-related degrees is dwindling. Engelbert will also reveal new, original Ovum research on the topics of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, security and augmented reality, as well as discuss what each of those technologies might mean for women in our field. As always, we'll also leave plenty of time to answer all your questions live on the air and chat board.
To save this item to your list of favorite Light Reading content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
(3) | 
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Tweet This