CALIX, INC 10-K

ITEM 1. Business Company Overview Calix was founded in 1999. We develop, market and sell our Calix platform (cloud, software and systems) and managed services that enable service providers of all types and sizes to innovate and transform their businesses. For our customers to successfully transform their businesses into the innovative broadband service providers, or BSPs, of the future, they require actionable data for critical business functions such as network operations, customer support and marketing. However, this data is often trapped in disparate systems or departmental silos. Our Calix platform, which includes Calix Cloud, Revenue EDGE and Intelligent Access EDGE, gathers, analyzes and applies machine learning to deliver real-time insights seamlessly to each key business function. Our customers utilize these data and insights to simplify network operations, marketing and customer support and deliver experiences that excite their subscribers. This enables BSPs to grow their brand through increased subscriber acquisition, loyalty and revenue and to reduce their operating costs, creating value for their businesses and the communities they serve. This is our mission: to enable BSPs of all sizes to simplify, excite and grow. We believe our platform offers a competitive edge to BSPs at a critical time of increasing competition from direct-to-consumer cloud companies and device providers as they expand their reach and focus on owning the connected home experience. For example, these competitors are entering the home by offering Wi-Fi enabled devices, and then leveraging behavioral insights to expand their direct relationship and build their brand with the subscriber by offering additional consumer services. Over time, we expect this competition can erode a BSP’s brand and relationship with its subscribers, by reducing broadband to an easy-to-replace commodity, which can increase churn and reduce revenue. Our platform enables BSPs to build next generation networks and offer higher-value managed services offerings that enable them to grow revenue, increase subscriber loyalty and monetize their network investments. Innovative BSPs, who are embracing our platform, understand this competitive threat and that their brand’s central position in the home is their most valuable strategic asset. As such, they must protect and expand continually. Our Intelligent Access EDGE network solution and Revenue EDGE subscriber solution are designed to allow BSPs to simplify their businesses and reduce operating costs, while launching exciting new services in a matter of days and weeks instead of months and years. Our role-based cloud enables BSP teams, such as marketing, operations or customer support, to leverage real-time behavioral analytics to anticipate the subscriber’s needs, whether that is optimized broadband speed, managed Wi-Fi or a new, differentiated managed service offering such as home network security, content control and connected cameras. Our platform is built to enable BSPs to deploy a growing ecosystem of third-party solutions such as Arlo Secure and Bark Social as fully managed services quickly and easily. This enables the BSP to add significant value to what were previously just “over-the-top” solutions. We are also enabling deeper integration with workflow solutions such as Facebook and solutions from independent software vendors such as National Information Solutions Cooperative, or NISC. This level of integration enables BSPs to simplify and streamline their operations and go-to-market execution. The BSPs’ teams can then utilize insights from Calix Cloud to offer these new and innovative services to those subscribers who have the propensity to buy, thereby growing revenue as they deliver a connected home experience at significantly lower operating costs. This also enables them to build their brand and value proposition around innovation and subscriber experience. As a result, many of Calix’s BSP customers have experienced improved customer satisfaction scores, minimal churn and significant growth. To expand our reach in the market, we will continue to pursue strategic technology and distribution relationships that align with BSPs’ strategic priorities. At the same time, we offer our Calix Customer Success and Support Services along with a growing portfolio of market activation resources that provide the BSPs with best practices and programs to strengthen and grow their brand with their subscribers, thereby increasing subscriber loyalty and opportunities to grow their subscriber base. Strategy Overview Our strategy is to position Calix as the key partner providing a broadband delivery platform (cloud, software and systems) and managed services to enable and facilitate the transformation of BSP access networks and the home network experience in order to provide an exceptional broadband experience for their subscribers. Most BSPs will require significant transformation of their business and operations to become an essential provider of data-driven, high-value managed services to their subscribers. The principal elements of our strategy are: 4 Table of Contents Starting with the data – The principal way we gather, analyze and deliver actionable insights for BSPs is via the Calix Cloud. Our role-based Calix Cloud enables critical functions within a BSP’s business, such as marketing, operations and support, to leverage real-time data to continually understand and optimize the experience for their subscribers. Building and evolving our platform – Our product strategy centers on our strategic platform. Our platform simplifies BSPs’ businesses by delivering intelligence and automation across the entire subscriber facing network – from the data center edge to the subscriber’s devices. Our strategy is to continually augment and extend our platform with features and services directly or through partners to allow our BSP customers to deliver cutting-edge services to their subscribers. Engaging directly with customers – We continue to invest in our direct sales capabilities so that we can engage deeply with our customers to help them understand the differentiable value that our platform provides. As we deploy new solutions, we are building the expertise of our team by adding specialized resources in areas such as marketing, cloud and network operations. Our direct model is complemented with selective programs for our channel partners, who have established local market expertise and have demonstrated the ability to generate new market opportunities and support sales of cutting-edge technologies for BSPs. Expanding customer footprint across our total addressable opportunity – Our total addressable opportunity includes service providers of any type and size, including local and competitive exchange carriers, cable multiple system operators, or cable MSOs, wireless internet service providers, or WISPs, fiber overbuilders such as municipalities and electric cooperatives and hospitality providers. We have added over 100 new BSP customers per year for the past three years purchasing directly or through our partners. Our diverse and growing customer footprint is a critical source of our future growth as we expand our portfolio and sell additional components of our platform and managed services to both new and existing customers. Our platform expands our total addressable opportunity and recurring revenue streams by allowing us to address the needs of not only traditional wireline-focused service providers, but also emerging service providers. As such, we intend to continue to engage emerging providers that are creating entirely new customer segments, including fiber overbuilders, utilities and municipalities. We will also continue to pursue service provider segments where there is an opportunity to grow our current share, such as cable MSOs, large traditional wireline-focused service providers and international markets. Extending portfolio of Calix services – Our services team, Calix Services, supports our BSPs as they define their transformation strategies, build new skills, implement new technologies and deploy new subscriber services. Calix Services’ capabilities address the BSP’s entire network and service delivery lifecycle. These services allow BSPs to benefit directly from our deep expertise working with service providers to optimize their operations and leverage our advanced analytics to improve the operational efficiency of their teams. Pursuing strategic relationships – We will continue to pursue strategic technology and distribution relationships that help us align with BSPs’ strategic priorities. We continue to invest to provide interoperability across the ecosystems that support our customers’ most critical business processes through our partner programs. By adding new solutions to our platform ecosystem, we significantly enhance the value that our platform delivers to BSPs. In addition, we are expanding our relationships with organizations that help our customers plan and execute in market. Examples of these partners are Conexon Connect, LLC, CCI Systems, Inc. and The Pivot Group, LLC. Product Overview Our product strategy centers on increasing the market adoption of our platform, which consists of: • Calix Cloud ® , which comes in three role-base editions: Calix Marketing Cloud, Calix Support Cloud and Calix Operations Cloud; • Calix Revenue EDGE, our premises solution for subscriber managed services; and • Calix Intelligent Access EDGE, access network solution for automated, intelligent next generation networks. These platform offerings are sold independently and offer unique entry points for new customers who are partnering with Calix to transform their businesses. However, an increased segment of our customers is leveraging all three components of our platform in an end-to-end strategy to simplify their businesses, excite their subscribers and grow the value that they deliver for their subscribers and communities. The Revenue EDGE The Revenue EDGE is a subscriber experience solution designed to enable BSPs to rapidly deploy new subscriber services to grow their businesses. The platform is built on Experience Innovation Platform component (formerly known as EXOS) and fully integrated with our GigaSpire ® and GigaPro ® family of systems to be ready for deployment as a complete subscriber experience platform for a BSP’s residential subscribers, small business subscribers and community networks. The Revenue EDGE also integrates real-time subscriber insights via our Calix Marketing Cloud, Calix Support Cloud and Calix Operations Cloud offerings, which are configurable to display role-based insights. These insights enable BSPs to anticipate and 5 Table of Contents target new revenue-generating services and applications through our mobile application, CommandIQ ® , and expanding portfolio of managed services. Our Cloud enables simple integrations with other market leading workflow solutions for Marketing, including Facebook, Mailchimp, Constant Contact and HubSpot, support ticketing solutions and operations support systems and business support systems to further simplify BSP processes and accelerate their time to market. Calix customers are evolving their go-to-market strategies to go beyond marketing broadband speed. Increasingly, they are becoming “experience” providers by delivering valuable managed services built on top of their Wi-Fi offerings. To date, Calix has launched nine managed services. This unique portfolio gives BSPs more opportunities to provide differentiated services to their subscribers and grow their revenue. The Revenue EDGE managed services portfolio enables BSPs to enter new markets for small businesses and communities, as well as expand their residential footprints. By leveraging the power of the Calix platform, BSPs of any size can simplify their businesses, excite their subscribers and grow value in their communities. • Managed Wi-Fi enables BSPs to actively manage all aspects of the subscriber’s Wi-Fi experience, ensuring they enjoy improved speeds, performance and Wi-Fi coverage that extends throughout their homes. • Command IQ is an intuitive mobile app designed to be branded by each BSP and provides their subscribers with visibility and control to understand and manage their connected experience. • Experience IQ offers the subscriber a full set of tools to manage and monitor each connected device in the home and the content it has access to. • Protect IQ is a network-level security application that works quietly in the background and proactively keeps malicious websites, viruses and intrusions away from subscribers’ homes 24x7. • Arlo Secure, a third-party application, enables BSPs to offer peace of mind to their subscribers with a fully managed connected camera solution. • Bark, a third-party application, is an integrated cutting-edge social monitoring service that scans over 30 of the most popular apps and social media platforms to alert parents and caregivers of issues like cyberbullying, online predators and sexual content. • Servify Care, a third-party application, enables BSPs to protect all eligible devices in a home under the same easy-to-use plan and potentially save subscribers hundreds of dollars annually. • SmartTown is an innovative solution to enable BSPs of any size to connect people with private, secure and safe Wi-Fi experiences in town, at parks, at outdoor events and on the go. • SmartBiz is an all-in-one integrated managed service to deliver a purpose-built, broadband solution to address the needs of the 34 million small businesses across the United States and Canada. Finally, to support these managed services, we offer Market Activation resources and programs to enable BSP teams to quickly deploy, manage and monetize each service that they provide to subscribers. These resources include marketing content that can be easily customized with on-line tools, training programs, success services and professional services. The Intelligent Access EDGE The Intelligent Access EDGE solution is built on the award-winning Network Innovation Platform component (formerly known as AXOS) and redefines the access edge of the network by simplifying its architecture and operations. The Network Innovation Platform component is implemented in our E-Series family of modular, non-blocking systems, enabling BSPs to meet a wide variety of deployment scenarios. The Intelligent Access EDGE allows BSPs to collapse multiple network elements in the access network into a single system and by using specialized software modules to add functionality and remove complexity, the solution reduces the total cost of ownership and the time to market for new services. In addition, insights delivered through Calix Operations Cloud enable BSPs to monitor network performance more effectively and address performance issues more efficiently. Intelligent Access EDGE Enablement services are designed to ensure BSP teams are fully enabled to deploy and manage next generation networks. We offer a range of training, professional and success services to assist BSPs in every domain of network management from strategy to deployment and management. 6 Table of Contents Traditional Products We continue to support and offer customers our traditional family of EXA and GigaCenter ® Systems that are widely deployed in customer networks, primarily in North America. We expect that these products will continue to be utilized in our customers’ networks in addition to our newer platform offerings. Customers We market and sell our platform (cloud, software and systems) and managed services to service providers of all types and sizes. To date, we have focused primarily on service providers in the North American market. Our customers span all sizes of broadband subscriber count from a few hundred to more than six million. We have enabled approximately 1,900 service providers, purchasing directly and through partners, to deploy passive optical, Active Ethernet and point-to-point Ethernet fiber access networks. Our service provider customers include: ALLO Communications; Connect Holding II, LLC (dba Brightspeed); CityFibre Holdings Limited; Conexon Connect; Cox Communications; Gibson Connect, LLC; Jade Communications; Lumen Technologies, Inc. (formerly known as CenturyLink, Inc.), or Lumen; Paul Bunyan Communications; Silver Star Communications; TDS Telecommunications LLC; Windstream Holdings, Inc. and Verizon Communications, Inc. The U.S. Federal government has approved programs, totaling more than $60 billion, to fund broadband and connectivity expansion across the United States. Calix has a dedicated team of funding specialists, assisting our customers with the most up-to-date information on broadband funding opportunities as they are introduced and personalized strategies to maximize their grants to support their growth. We classify service providers into large, medium and small based on the number of broadband subscribers they serve. Large service providers are those with wide geographic footprints and broadband subscribers of 2.5 million or more. Medium service providers also operate typically within a wide geographic footprint but are smaller in scale with broadband subscribers that range from 250,000 to 2.5 million. Small service providers consist primarily of over 1,000 predominantly local independent operating companies, or IOCs, typically focused on a single community or a cluster of communities. They include a growing number of municipalities, electric cooperatives, fiber overbuilders and WISPs. These entities range in size from a few hundred to 250,000 broadband subscribers. Historically, Lumen accounted for more than 10% of revenue and represented 11% of revenue in 2020. Our efforts to grow our Calix platform, add new BSP customers and shift away from low-value deployment services primarily related to Lumen have all contributed to Lumen representing less than 10% of our revenue in 2022 and 2021. No other customer represented more than 10% of revenue in 2022, 2021 and 2020. Sales to customers outside the United States represented 9% of our revenue in 2022, 17% of our revenue in 2021 and 13% of our revenue in 2020. Our sales outside the United States have been and are currently predominantly to customers in the Americas and Europe. Customer Engagement Model We market, sell and support the success of our platform (cloud, software and systems) and managed services predominantly through our direct sales force, supported by marketing, product management and customer success personnel. We have also expanded this model to include select channel partners in North America and more than 40 international channel partners. Even in circumstances where a channel partner is involved, our sales and marketing personnel are generally selling side-by-side with the channel partner. We believe that our direct customer engagement approach provides us with significant differentiation in the customer sales process and customer engagement programs by aligning us more closely with our customers’ changing needs and successful implementation of our solutions. Research and Development Continued investment in research and development is critical to our business. We have made significant investments in our product portfolio, and we intend to continue to dedicate significant resources to research and development to develop, enhance and deliver new platform features and capabilities, including investments in innovative technologies that support our business strategy. Our research and development team is composed of engineers with expertise in software and cloud platforms, optics, wireless technologies and systems engineering. Our research and development team is responsible for designing, developing and enhancing our platform and managed services, performing product and quality assurance testing and ensuring the compatibility of our products with third-party hardware and software products. Increasingly, our engineers are focused on enhancements to our cloud and software platform components. Our teams of engineers currently remain concentrated in San Jose and Petaluma, California; Bangalore, India; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Nanjing, China; and Richardson, Texas. We also outsource a portion of our software and cloud development to domestic and international third parties, and we depend on these partners to meet our development plans. 7 Table of Contents Manufacturing and Supply Chain We rely on contract manufacturers, original design manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers and third-party logistics partners for the supply and distribution of our products. Our global supply chain management organization oversees these third parties to source and procure materials, manufacture and deliver our products. Our global supply chain management organization consists of order management, planning, sourcing, logistics, test and manufacturing engineers and new product introduction personnel. We tightly integrate our supply chain management and new product introduction activities with the activities outsourced to these third parties. We believe that our relationships with and our reliance on third parties allow us to improve new product introduction time, conserve working capital, reduce product costs and minimize delivery lead times while maintaining high product quality as well as the ability to scale quickly to handle increased order volume. We continue to qualify and utilize other vendors for various portions of our supply chain from time to time. As a result of the current semiconductor and other component shortages, global restrictions and uncertainty related to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have experienced product supply delays as we and our supply chain partners experience longer lead times and shortages of components and materials. We believe the impact of these shortages will continue to impact the ability of our third-party manufacturers to supply products to us at the cost and in the time frames and volumes required by us. Although global logistics and transport services have begun to improve, we continue to monitor potential challenges in managing these areas to ensure consistent delivery to our customers. Seasonality Fluctuations in our revenue occur due to many factors, including the varying budget cycles and seasonal buying patterns of our customers. More specifically, our customers tend to spend less in the first fiscal quarter as they are finalizing their annual capital spending budgets, and in certain regions, customers are also challenged by winter weather conditions that inhibit outside fiber deployment. In recent years, as our revenue from our large customers decreased, we have experienced less year-end volatility due to capital budgetary spending or freezing. This combined with an increase in recurring revenue has resulted in smaller seasonal fluctuations, and we expect this trend to continue. Competition The communications software and systems equipment markets are highly competitive. Competition is largely based on any one or a combination of the following factors: functionality and features, price, existing business and customer relationships, product quality, installation capability, service and support, long-term returns, scalability, development and manufacturing capability. We compete with several companies within the markets that we serve, and we anticipate that competition will intensify. Vendors with which we compete include: ADTRAN, Inc.; Ciena Corporation; CommScope Inc.; DZS Inc.; eero/Ring (Amazon companies); Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.; Google Nest (a Google company); Nokia Corporation; Plume Design, Inc. and Ubiquiti Inc. In various geographic or vertical markets, there are also several smaller companies with which we compete. As we expand into adjacent markets, we expect to encounter new competitors. Many of our competitors have the financial resources to offer competitive products at a below market price, which could prevent us from competing effectively. Intellectual Property We rely on a combination of intellectual property, or IP, rights, including patents, trade secrets, copyrights and trademarks as well as customary contractual protections. These rights and protections are accomplished through a combination of internal and external controls, including contractual protections with employees, contractors, customers and partners, and through a combination of U.S. and international IP laws. As of December 31, 2022, we held 110 U.S. patents and have seven pending U.S. patent applications. As of December 31, 2022, we had no pending international patent applications. U.S. patents generally have a term of twenty years from filing. The remaining terms on our individual patents vary from less than a year to seventeen years. U.S. patent, copyright and trade secret laws afford us only limited protection, and the laws of some foreign countries do not protect proprietary rights to the same extent. We believe that the frequency of assertions of patent infringement has and continues to increase in our industry. Any claim of infringement from a third party, even claims without merit, could cause us to incur substantial costs defending against such claims, could require us to pay substantial damages or include an injunction or other court order that could prevent us from selling our products. In addition, we might be required to seek a license which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all. Alternatively, we may be required to develop non-infringing technology, which would require significant effort and expense. 8 Table of Contents Human Capital We employed 1,426 employees globally as of December 31, 2022 with 930 employees located in the United States and 496 outside of the United States, primarily in Canada, China and India. Except for one employee located in France and subject to customary local collective bargaining arrangements, we do not have any employees represented by a labor union with respect to their employment with us. We have not experienced any work stoppages and consider our relations with our employees to be good. We consider our talent to be very important to our operations and execution of our business strategy as well as the overall success of our business. As such, we invest significant management attention, time and resources to attract, engage, develop and retain our talent. Our talent strategy focuses on our culture and core values, our talent programs and the overall well-being and safety of our talent. Our culture and core values. We believe that by nurturing a robust culture based on our core values we can attract, hire and retain a highly skilled and engaged team. Our cultural pillars – to collaborate, create and communicate – reflect the way we lead and work with one another internally as well as externally with our customers, partners, suppliers and other stakeholders. We seek to embed our core values to act responsibly and with integrity, to instill a sense of individual roles and purpose at Calix, to communicate openly and honestly and to “take care of our own” in how we lead and conduct our business. Our culture of collaboration creates an inclusive working environment and inclusive engagement with our stakeholders; our culture to create encourages innovation from diverse experiences, backgrounds and characteristics; and our culture to communicate encourages open and honest discussion. Our talent programs. We invest in talent programs to identify and hire candidates who embody our culture and core values and will further our mission. We focus on onboarding and assimilating our hires into the Calix culture while encouraging them to express their own diverse views and talents, in turn strengthening our culture. Although we do have facilities for our employees, we embrace a “work from anywhere” environment which allows us to hire top talent regardless of their physical location. Our total rewards programs are designed to foster an energized, engaged, motivated and high-performing workforce. We hire and compensate our talent based on their role, experiences, contributions and performance, regardless of their gender, race or ethnic background or other personal characteristics. For example, our current programs include cash incentive bonuses designed to reward corporate and individual performance and cash bonus opportunities for internal promotions to senior leadership roles. We offer performance stock option grants for senior executives, and because we believe stock ownership rewards employees for corporate performance aligned to our stockholders’ interests, we offer two separate employee stock purchase plans. Our programs are regularly reviewed and adjusted based on benchmarks against competitive industry programs. We encourage open communication with our teams and reference third-party administered surveys to improve how we engage with and support our talent. We also believe that continuous learning is core to ensuring our on-going success and have invested in multiple on-demand learning platforms and other knowledge resources and tools that are available to all employees globally. Our wellness, safety and health programs. A centerpiece of our culture is “taking care of our own,” which means we foster a collaborative and supportive environment so that every member of our team can thrive. This mindset starts with our CEO and is embedded in how we lead as well as in our wellness, safety and health programs. Our programs seek to support wellbeing broadly, with comprehensive physical and mental health and financial benefit offerings, that include various time off programs as well as reimbursement benefits and a remote office program. Corporate Information Our principal executive offices are located at: 2777 Orchard Parkway, San Jose, California 95134, and our telephone number is: (408) 514-3000. Our website address is: www.calix.com. We do not incorporate the information on or accessible through our website into this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and you should not consider any information on, or that can be accessed through, our website as part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Calix ® , the Calix logo design, AXOS ® , Calix Cloud ® , CommandIQ ® , EXOS ® , GigaCenter ® , GigaSpire ® and other trademarks or service marks of Calix appearing in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are the property of Calix. Trade names, trademarks and service marks of other companies appearing in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are the property of the respective holders. The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, maintains a website at www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC. We post on the Investor Relations page of our website, www.calix.com, a link to our filings with the SEC free of charge, as soon as reasonably practical after they are filed electronically with the SEC.