Layoffs of 15% hit the cable equipment firm as its Cuda line gets 'retired'
BigBand Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: BBND) said today it will lay off approximately 15 percent of its workforce and "retire" its "Cuda" cable modem termination system (CMTS) platform in concert with a larger restructuring plan.
BigBand disclosed the moves in announcing its third-quarter results, which saw year-over-year revenues dip 10 percent, to $38.5 million. The company also posted a net loss of $12.2 million ($0.21 per share), versus net income of $1.6 million ($0.03 per share) a year ago. (See BigBand Reports Q3.)
On the plus side, CEO Amir Bassan-Eskenazi was able to announce today that Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) has picked BigBand as a switched digital video vendor. That news came out during a conference call with analysts.
The decision to shed the CMTS unit does not come as a big surprise. In August, the company laid off a portion of its CMTS staff and reallocated some of those people toward its digital video business. The move spurred speculation that the company would indeed bug out of the CMTS business. (See BigBand Reduces CMTS Staff.)
At the time, company officials declined to confirm the final fate of its CMTS portfolio, other than to note that BigBand would train its CMTS-related focus on Docsis 3.0 and the modular cable modem termination system (M-CMTS), an emerging architecture that breaks out functions such as downstream and upstream capacity. (See BigBand Not Abandoning CMTS .)
BigBand got into the CMTS business in 2004, when it picked up the IP Cable division of ADC (Nasdaq: ADCT). Since then, it has had trouble gathering deployment wins for Cuda outside of marquee agreements with operators such as Cox Communications Inc.
"We have decided to focus on our unique core competency – video – and no longer commit resources to the Cuda CMTS platform," Bassan-Eskenazi said in a statement, referring to the company's relative strength in the switched digital video and edge QAM sectors.
In other restructuring news, BigBand has appointed David Heard to chief operating officer. He will also continue to serve in his previous role of general manager of product operations.
BigBand is also changing CFOs, as earlier this month, Fred Ball announced his pending retirement.
— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Cable Digital News
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