CALIX, INC 10-K

ITEM 1. Business Company Overview Calix was founded in 1999. We develop, market and sell our 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 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 a growing portfolio of SmartLife managed services and 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 over-the-top 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, not the BSP’s, 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 service offerings that enable them to grow revenue, increase subscriber loyalty and monetize their network investments. Innovative BSPs, who embrace 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 they are in the home, roaming across the town or managing a small business. Our platform is built to enable BSPs to quickly and easily deploy a growing portfolio of SmartLife managed services to connect entire communities. This enables BSPs to establish themselves as essential technology innovators that are enabling their communities to grow and thrive. The BSPs’ teams can 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 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 award-winning 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 networks and the residential and small business network experience in order to excite all of their subscribers. Most BSPs will require 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: 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. 4 Table of Contents 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 BSP customers – We continue to invest in our direct sales capabilities so that we can engage deeply with our BSP 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 tribal communities, multiple dwelling units and hospitality providers. For the past four years, we have averaged adding over 90 new BSP customers per year 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 enables us to expand 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 technical synergy across the ecosystems that support our customers’ most critical business processes through our partner program. 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, ePlus Technology, inc. and The Pivot Group, LLC. Product Overview Our product strategy centers on increasing the market adoption of two fundamental components: 1. Our Calix Platform, which consists of: • Calix Cloud ® , which comes in three role-base editions: Calix Engagement Cloud (formerly Calix Marketing Cloud), Calix Service Cloud (formerly Calix Support Cloud) and Calix Operations Cloud. • Calix Intelligent Access EDGE™, access network solution for automated, intelligent next generation networks. • Calix Revenue EDGE™, our premises solution for subscriber managed services. 2. Our SmartLife managed services offerings, which consist of: • SmartHome™ managed services and applications to enhance, operate and secure the connected experience of subscribers in their home, including managed Wi-Fi, advanced content control, network security, connected cameras, social media monitoring for kids and device protection programs. • SmartTown ® managed services that reimagine community Wi-Fi as a ubiquitous, secure and managed experience across a BSP’s footprint by making their town a SmartTown. By leveraging residential and small business Wi-Fi systems combined with strategically deployed outdoor Wi-Fi access points, BSPs can serve subscribers, schools, municipalities, organizations, planned communities and more. These opportunities open new markets and relationships with the public sector to reduce reliance on and protect against 5G LTE fixed wireless access. 5 Table of Contents • SmartBiz™ managed services that address the business networking and productivity needs of small business owners with an all-in-one managed service that increases staff productivity, secures critical business systems and enhances customer loyalty. Each managed subscriber service is complemented by real-time subscriber insights via Calix Engagement Cloud, Calix Service Cloud and Calix Operations Cloud offerings, which are configurable to display role-based insights for BSP general management, marketing, support, operations and engineering staff. These insights enable BSPs to anticipate and target new revenue-generating services and applications through our mobile application, CommandIQ ® for residents and CommandWorx ™ for businesses. Our Calix 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. The SmartLife™ managed services are built on the Calix Platform and fully integrated with our GigaSpire ® and GigaPro ® family of Wi-Fi systems to be ready for deployment as a complete subscriber experience solution for a BSP’s residential subscribers, small business subscribers and community networks. 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. This unique portfolio gives BSPs more opportunities to provide differentiated services to their subscribers and grow their revenue. Our access network solutions redefine the access edge of the network by simplifying its architecture and operations. The Calix Platform’s access network component is implemented in our E-Series family of modular, non-blocking systems, enabling BSPs to meet a wide variety of deployment scenarios. BSPs can consolidate multiple access network elements into a single system using specialized software modules that add functionality and remove complexity, thereby reducing the total cost of ownership and the time to market for new services. 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. These offerings are sold independently and offer unique entry points for new customers who are partnering with Calix to transform their businesses. Moreover, an increased segment of our customer base is leveraging all components of our platform and managed services 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. Finally, to support these managed services, we offer market activation resources and customer support programs through our customer success organization 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. 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 currently have approximately 1,600 active service provider customers, purchasing directly and through partners, to deploy passive optical, Active Ethernet or point-to-point Ethernet access networks or subscriber premise systems. Our service provider customers include: ALLO Communications; Connect Holding II, LLC (dba Brightspeed); CityFibre Holdings Limited; Conexon Connect; Cox Communications; Gibson Connect, LLC; Hunter Communications; Jade Communications; Gridiron Fiber Corporation (DBA Lumos); Lumen Technologies, Inc., or Lumen; Paul Bunyan Communications; Silver Star Communications; Tombigbee Electric Power Association and Tombigbee Fiber, LLC 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, cable MSOs, electric cooperatives, fiber overbuilders and WISPs. These entities range in size from a few hundred to 250,000 broadband subscribers. 6 Table of Contents No customer represented more than 10% of revenue in 2023, 2022 or 2021. Sales to customers outside the United States represented 9% of our revenue in 2023, 9% of our revenue in 2022 and 17% of our revenue in 2021. 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 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; Nanjing, China; Bangalore, India; Minneapolis, Minnesota and Richardson, Texas. We also outsource a portion of our software and cloud development to domestic and international third parties and depend on these partners to meet our development plans. Manufacturing and Supply Chain We rely on CMs, ODMs 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 additional vendors for various portions of our supply chain from time to time. The COVID-19 pandemic-induced global demand surge resulted in supply chain challenges, including component shortages or unavailability, end-of-life notifications, extended lead times, elongated transit times, port congestion, spot market purchases, multiple price increases and surcharges. These challenges abated during 2023. The overhang from these events is a buildup of inventory in the supply chain. At our direction, our suppliers built up inventory to buffer against the long lead-times for semiconductors and other electronic components. We are using this as an opportunity to realign our strategic buffer inventory to protect against future disruptions. Most of the excess inventory will be worked off during the normal course of business. As time goes on, there may be components that become obsolete due to technology shifts or demand changes. This will be reflected in our inventory reserve balance as it becomes apparent during our financial reviews. For example, during the fourth quarter of 2023, we wrote down obsolete inventory and accrued a liability for components at suppliers primarily related to the wind down of our legacy product family that existed before our shift to an all-platform model. 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, 7 Table of Contents 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); Harmonic, Inc.; 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 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, 2023, we held 111 U.S. patents and 26 pending U.S. and 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. Human Capital We employed 1,760 employees globally as of December 31, 2023 with 1,055 employees located in the United States and 705 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. Culture and values. At Calix, we believe culture is how each employee treats their teammates, customers and partners every day. Each employee is entrusted with our culture to create a positive work experience for all. This is grounded by each employee knowing their purpose, their commitment to creativity, collaboration and communication as well as investing in the success of others. From leadership down, Calix embraces a “better, better, never best” philosophy, which we believe encourages continuous improvement and experimentation. This culture enables Calix to deliver on its mission to help BSPs simplify their businesses, excite their subscribers and grow value for their communities. Talent Development. We prioritize the ongoing professional growth of our team by providing on-demand access to training through top-notch industry platforms. Additionally, we provide educational resources and the chance to glean insights from subject matter experts spanning diverse topics. Our commitment extends globally, fostering a collaborative space for leaders to connect and evolve as Calix champions. Complementing these efforts, we offer valuable developmental opportunities such as stretch assignments and participation in our mentorship program. We firmly believe that sustained investment in the skills and knowledge of our team is pivotal to ensuring our enduring success. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. At Calix, we strive to create an inclusive culture that values diversity, promotes equity and celebrates the differences among us. We believe a diverse workforce is at the core of our innovation and drives productivity and growth. Our diversity and inclusion strategy takes into consideration the entire employee life cycle, from recruitment, to learning and development and total rewards. We support a range of employee programs and initiatives designed to foster belonging, engagement, acceptance and diversity through employee-led affinity groups, leadership events, meetups and celebrations. We are proud and honored to be recognized by industry experts for our diverse culture. Community Outreach. Calix is committed to creating a positive social impact by leveraging our resources, expertise and network to address pressing societal challenges. We strive to give back to the community whenever possible. To establish a rhythm and cadence, Calix sponsors two major giving campaigns throughout the year – National Volunteer Month in April and 8 Table of Contents Season of Giving in the fourth quarter as well as ongoing initiatives throughout the year. We believe together we can be a force for good and are determined to drive change in the communities where we operate and beyond. Our wellness, safety and health programs. At Calix, employee well-being is crucial to creating a healthy workplace where employees can do their best work. We recognize that employees have diverse needs when it comes to health and well-being and provide an expanded library of tools and apps, including “Unmind,” an app that provides digital tools and techniques designed to empower employees to live a more fulfilling and balanced life. To further support employees and their wellness journey, we launched a “LifeStyle” Wellness Reimbursement Program that offers employees a quarterly wellness allowance to help employees reach their personal wellness goals and support a healthy lifestyle. We also implemented Productivity and Recharge Days and a Leadership Cares program for leaders to send gifts to employees. We believe that these initiatives have helped Calix become a top company to work for. 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 ® , CommandWorx ™ , GigaPro ® , GigaSpire ® , SmartTown ® 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.