Harmonic continued to make steady progress in the third quarter with CableOS, a virtual cable modem termination system (vCMTS) that has also been adapted to support fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks.

In tandem with its Q3 2021 results, Harmonic announced Monday that CableOS now supports about 3.9 million cable modems, up 77% from the year-ago period. That also marks an increase of roughly 600,000 modems served from the end of Q2 2021.

Harmonic ended Q3 with 68 CableOS customers, up 77% year-over-year, and up from 62 at the end of Q2 2021.

Comcast is Harmonic's marquee US customer for CableOS, but Harmonic says the platform is also gaining traction with tier 1 and tier 2 operators around the globe. The vendor added two more tier 1s to the CableOS customer list in Q3, pushing its tier 1 tally to eight, including three out of the top five in North America, Vodafone in Europe and Claro and Millicom in Latin America, Harmonic CEO Patrick Harshman said on Monday's earnings call.

CableOS momentum helped to push the company's cable access revenues up 43%, to $57.6 million. For Q4, Harmonic now expects cable access revenues of $65 million to $70 million, up from prior guidance of $50 million to $60 million. But upside in that segment is still limited by ongoing supply chain constraints, CFO Sanjay Kalra said.

Harshman reiterated his view that Harmonic is poised to take over second place in terms of total CMTS market share, a move that would put it ahead of Cisco Systems and behind only CommScope. According to Dell'Oro Group, Harmonic now commands 20% of the cable access concentrator market, which includes DOCSIS infrastructure elements such as converged cable access platform (CCAP) cores and chassis, virtual CCAP licensing and distributed access architecture (DAA) nodes and modules.

Elsewhere, Harmonic recently launched a "MAC Anywhere" initiative that fits into the cable industry's DAA activities. Harmonic has also been identified as one of the suppliers working with Comcast to develop an FDX Amplifier. If successful, such a product could enable Comcast to more broadly deploy Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX), one of the flavors of the new DOCSIS 4.0 specifications.

Harmonic's video segment saw revenues climb 26%, to $68.7 million. That was aided in part by 69% growth in a streaming software-as-a-service business that's affixed with recurring revenue.

Q3 beat, Q4 raise

Total revenues reached $126.3 million, up 33.1% year-over-year, handily beating Wall Street expectations of $118.6 million.

Harmonic raised total Q4 revenue guidance to a range of $147 million to $157 million, versus prior guidance of $133 million to $148 million. As a result, Harmonic shares were up $1.38 (14.79%) to $10.71 in Tuesday morning trading.

"We see double-digit sales and earnings growth as sustainable," Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold explained in a research note. He maintained an "Outperform" rating on the stock following Harmonic's Q3 beat and Q4 raise.

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading