NETGEAR, Inc. (NTGR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning and thank you for joining us for NETGEAR's 2022 Financial Analyst Day. We're excited to share presentations with you on our progress for the business and our expectations for the future, but before we begin, we advise you that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding expected revenue, operating margins, tax rates, expenses and future business outlook. Actual results or trends could differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in NETGEAR's periodic filings with the SEC, including the most recent Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements that we make today are based on assumptions as of today and NETGEAR undertakes no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Now on to the agenda. Patrick will start us off with an introduction and overview. David Henry will recap our strategy for our Connected Home business and what we see going forward. Heidi Cormack will talk about our success with our direct-to-consumer marketing strategy and subscription business. Vikram Mehta will then talk about the tailwinds driving our SMB business. To wrap it up, Bryan Murray will discuss the financials, along with our outlook. After that, we will hold an interactive Q&A session. And with that, I'll hand it off to Patrick.

Thank you, Erik and thank you, everyone for joining our 2022 Analyst Day. To say the least, 2022 has been a very eventful year and has been presenting challenges for us, as well as with many other companies with high inflation, with a pullback in demand after the pandemic on a post pandemic situation and certainly with the war in Europe, while a lot of the aches that we're seeing in terms of supply suit lingers. So with all those challenges, we believe that we have maneuvered quite well and also, we're very, very happy to get clarity on the execution of our strategy, which is progressing and proving the strategy is sound and will lead us to sustained growth going forward. And I look forward to have a presentation today to all of you that will really explain both our strategy, as well as the progress in the execution of the strategy into a very bright future for NETGEAR with all the growth elements that we believe that we are executing very well and seeing really, really good growth. The 4 areas being our premium, high-end mesh WiFi for home users, as well as the premium 5G mobile spots. That hardware category is doing really, really well and on the SMB side with the ProAV, which is a space that we invented and is expanding really fast. Last but not the least, is our subscription services of our various value-added services, both on the SMB and the CHP side. And you'll hear a presentation from our team on all those areas, as well as after all the presentation an interactive Q&A session. So without further ado, I would like to start the presentation today and I'm sure that you enjoy the presentation as much as our team do. Okay. Thank you, let's go with the presentation, operator?

Thank you, Patrick, and good morning. I'm excited to share with you today our progress on creating a new Connected Home business, based on highly differentiated, high margin, premium connectivity solutions, complemented by valuable subscription services. These new products meet the growing needs of the premium customer for always on secure, high speed Internet connectivity for all their devices anywhere in the home, the backyard and on the road. At NETGEAR, with our expertise in RF design, WiFi, 5G and 20-plus years of customer wireless experience, we are uniquely positioned to address these customer needs. We expect these premium products will be the backbone of our revenue and primary generator of our profit in the future. At last year's Analyst Day, we announced our latest innovation in Orbi WiFi mesh, our Orbi 9 series, boasting WiFi 6E, Quad-band mesh and 10-gigabit WAN connection. Today, I'm proud to say the Orbi 9 has exceeded our expectations. One year later, it is still the only quad-band mesh system on the market. Our competitors have discovered that it is very difficult to develop such a product with 4 wireless radios across the 2.4, 5 and 6 gigahertz bands. Orbi 9 has swept the awards for high-performance mesh systems and is widely known as the performance King for those who want uncompromised wireless speeds and coverage. And customers have responded, making the Orbi 9 3 pack our #1 selling mesh system and the highest revenue-generating WiFi 6E system on the market. And just last month, we upgraded our original performance King, the Orbi 8 Series. The new Orbi 8 is supercharged with our powerful patented antenna design that boost WiFi coverage and performance by 20% over the previous generation. It is ideal for connecting those iPhones, MAXs' and Windows 10 notebooks without WiFi 6E with the best performance and coverage. And with one year of Armor included, it protects all connected devices from hackers, with a shield of cybersecurity regarding your computers, phones, smart TVs, gaming consoles, security cameras and more. The Orbi 8 and the Orbi 9 are the only WiFi systems on the market with 10-gigabit WAN connections, supporting the fastest multi-gig Internet speed that are offered today and the future. With our Orbi 8 and Orbi 9, we are creating a completely new market, super premium WiFi systems. These customers have large homes, typically larger than 3,000 square feet. They subscribe to the fastest broadband. 2/3 have gigabit speeds are faster. They have a home full of the latest connected gadgets, over half have more than 30 connected devices on their networks. And of course, they are high income, over $150,000 of household income and are not price sensitive. They are willing to invest upwards of $1,500 for our Orbi 9 system. This group of tech loving customers were not served before by any retail networking products. They want all their many devices inside or outside anyone in their properties to have unimpeded speed and connectivity to the Internet. Before, the only solution is an installer commissioned Ethernet plus many access points with weatherproof outdoor setups. Those systems run up tens of thousands of dollars and are not for everyone, but only for the super affluent. We changed that with the introduction of the Orbi 8 and then the Orbi 9. Their challenging WiFi connectivity needs are fulfilled with a couple of thousand dollars instead of tens of thousands of dollars. We are hitting a sweet spot of the premium market. The overall consumer networking market declined by 20% year-on-year in Q3, dragged down by inflation and the demand pull in from 2020 and '21. But in that same period, our Orbi 8 and 9 mesh sales grew in the mid-teens and NETGEAR is the only player in that premium retail market. With WiFi 7 coming next year, we will push the ASP of that unique segment even higher. This new sweet spot premium market is very profitable as our products are highly sophisticated with lots of proprietary technologies, both in hardware and software. We invented tri-band mesh technology in 2016 with our original WiFi 5 Orbi and its dedicated backhaul, which gives Orbi a huge performance edge in homes with large numbers of WiFi devices. We invented quad-band mesh last year, adding a fourth 6 gigahertz band, with seamless roaming and channel steering software between 2.4, 5 and 6 gigahertz to ensure that each WiFi device is connected to the right Orbi note on the right band at the right time. Our superior proprietary antenna design and co-existence technology ensure that the radios in each band deliver the maximum power, range and performance without interfering with each other. Our over 20 years of analog wireless system design and testing experience is our competitive advantage that keeps us light years ahead of anyone in the WiFi market and we have over 150 patents to protect our innovations. Our deep, long-standing relationships with the silicon providers and RF component suppliers give us the earliest access to technology, which in many cases we codevelop. We will continue to invest in the people, technology and relationships to grow this competitive advantage and thus raise the barrier to entry in the coming years. So how are we expanding the TAM of this premium retail segment? First, driving up the ASPs via ever-increasing Internet and WiFi speeds, gigabit or 10 gigabit WiFi 7, 8, 9 and so on. The growth of key applications like 8K video streaming and gaming, augmented and virtual reality and the metaverse and the adoption of more and more connected devices in the home. Second, to expand the penetration to this user base, many of whom who are not aware of our Orbi solution and still using ISP-provided WiFi or our competitors, which they are not satisfied with. We will continue to strengthen our marketing resources and spending in this endeavor. Our estimate is that there are 1.3 million households in the United States in this segment and probably a similar TAM internationally. Today, we are just reaching 2% of them. Every day, we see the Internet getting more pervasive in our daily lives, just about everything we do at home involves a connection to the Internet, entertainment, work, shopping, travel, sports, health and wellness, safety, security and the list goes on and on. Video streaming is the killer application driving WiFi upgrades, as customers demand high-quality 4K video without buffering or pixilation. 4K video requires 25 megabits per second of sustained bandwidth and 8K requires over 100 megabits per second. The bar is even higher for live streams, which are even less tolerant to high latency or WiFi performance drops, while in Netflix or YouTube streaming can cash and adapt interruptions in WiFi performance, a live stream cannot. NFL's Thursday Night Football is now exclusively live-streamed on Amazon Prime. Performance drops would make the games unwatchable to the sports fan. We are all working from home more and more often and there are over 300 million meeting participants using Zoom every day. None of us want to be that one in the meeting who can't be reliably seen or heard. Live stream video has grown 250% since 2018 and will continue, driving more customers to upgrade to our premium Orbi WiFi systems. Finally, our premium Orbi customers have ultra connected homes, electric cars in a detached garage that require software updates to get the latest self-driving features. Smart home surveillance cameras, lighting and doorbells, which require always-on connectivity to keep those home secure. Smart gadgets like Echo Dots, Peloton bikes, Roomba vacuum cleaners and swimming pool heaters, connected entertainment products like smart TVs and gaming consoles, demanding high bandwidth and low latency. And of course, the work and school from home computers that are mission critical to us all. WiFi routers and mesh systems without NETGEAR's patented dedicated backhaul get progressively slower as the number of devices increases to the point that they can be virtually unusable. Indeed, many of our premium Orbi customers have over 30 connected devices and growing fast. The more these customers fill their homes with the latest tech, the more they will be forced to upgrade their home networks to support them. The trends are clearly there to drive the market demand and so is the technology. WiFi 7 is just around the corner to provide whole home multi-gigabit coverage and to ready homes for 10 gigabit Internet. Penta band WiFi with multilink operations combines the speed of the 6 gigahertz band with the WiFi coverage of the 5 gigahertz band. Flexible channel utilization ensures maximum use of the network, especially when there's interference. And 4K-QAM improves overall network capacity, faster speeds for even more devices. And just as we broke the $1,000 barrier with Orbi 8 and the $1500 barrier with Orbi 9 will push ASPs well beyond $2,000 as we introduce WiFi 7 and Penta band. If quad-band is super difficult for our competitors to master, penta band will make it impossible for our competition. As high-end consumer needs drive premium home connectivity, mobile Internet connections are also growing. Service providers like AT&T and Telstra are upgrading to the most advanced 5G mobile networks, which can support Internet speeds over 5 gigabit per second. And they are choosing NETGEAR with our Nighthawk M6 and M6 Pro as their mobile hotspot partner. Our in-house hardware, software and RF design expertise have the unique ability to integrate advanced 5G millimeter wave, WiFi 6E, 2.5 gigabit per second Ethernet into a battery-powered compact, handheld hotspot that delivers unrivaled performance to enterprise and government employees, mobile workforces and the emergency first responders that demand the most reliable, secure and high-performance connectivity. In addition, with our Insight Pro service, businesses can centrally configure, monitor and manage the hotspot for thousands of employees. Our service provider business, which is largely comprised of mobile hotspots, provide stable profitability, but we also have a new growth market with unlocked 5G mobile hotspots. There are 19 million Americans, 6% of the population that still lack access to fixed broadband service at threshold speeds of just 25 megabits per second. For these customers, the best solution is to use the 5G mobile networks to deliver high-speed Internet to their homes. Indeed, we find more than 50% of our unlocked mobile hotspot customers use their hotspot as their primary Internet connection, mainly because there are no viable wired alternatives at their home. Our newest Nighthawk M6 and M6 Pro mobile hotspot are designed to support this use case. Our in-home performance mode boost the WiFi output power to deliver up to 2,000 square foot coverage when the M6 is plugged into AC power. And for larger homes, the M6 Pro has a 2.5 gigabit per second Ethernet port, which can connect to an Orbi WiFi system to provide whole home WiFi coverage. Our unlocked 5G mobile hotspot retail business is growing over 50% year-on-year and we're just beginning. Our recently introduced Nighthawk M6 retails for $799 and our M6 Pro will retail for $999. And we will continue to introduce new products, for example, with WiFi 7 at even higher prices. In this new market, similar to the premium WiFi systems market, we have a unique combination of WiFi, 5G millimeter wave and battery power control technologies to make the barrier to entry extremely high for this segment, just from the technology standpoint. With the requirement to get operator certifications, which are based on years of relationship and lab access, the barriers to enter are made even higher. This is another high-growth, high-margin business where we are all alone creating the market. So in summary, our new connected home business is centered around 2 new high-margin product lines, premium WiFi mesh systems and unlocked 5G mobile hotspots, each of which are highly differentiated, fueled by our years of expertise and intellectual property in wireless hardware and software. Each of the product lines are addressing a high-end, price and sensitive customer base who needs the highest performance connectivity that only NETGEAR can provide. And each is complemented by our value-added subscription services, which will further increase our profitability. Now to talk about how we will market the new NETGEAR CHP business and grow our subscription services, I'd like to introduce our Chief Marketing Officer, Heidi Cormack.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. I'm Heidi Cormack, Chief Marketing Officer at NETGEAR. As you've heard from David, there is a significant market opportunity for super premium WiFi at home and on the road. Over the past year, we've continued to learn a lot not only about who these customers are, but also about their journey of discovery, education and conversion and by scaling our efforts using these insights and further discoveries, we are confident that we can accelerate new customer acquisition to expand the premium segment. Our marketing strategy will focus on 3 key areas; targeted performance marketing, delivering a seamless purchase journey and leveraging our loyal customers' networking to influence their friends and families. Our marketing initiatives have been laser-focused on creating a comprehensive path to conversion, which starts by understanding when and why people enter this market. Key activation points include; Frustration with current ISP provided or retail solutions that are not delivering the WiFi performance needed highly connected households, those that subscribe to gigabit plus Internet and have 30 or more connected devices. Those affluent households, which have just upgraded their home broadband speeds to gigabit plus to get faster speeds for streaming, gaming, work and more. All those households moving to a new larger home as family and income grows. And lastly, affluent jet set is unwilling to compromise for always on, secure high-speed Internet connectivity, no matter where they are, whether at their vacation homes or on the go. Regardless of their specific activation point, there are millions of these households around the world, typically with incomes over $150,000 or more that are eager for ultra-premium WiFi solutions that will meet their needs. We've learned that once in market, these customers invest significant time researching the best solution. They search for brand and product validation across multiple channels, including professional and competitive round-ups from trusted technology and news outlets, user reviews and many social media platforms. They frequently ask trusted friends and family for advice and invest time on our netgear.com websites and other e-commerce platforms where our products are available to purchase. And with over 75% of our super premium customers purchasing online, we've also learned it's critical that our full funnel, owned, earned and paid initiatives meet them at every stage of their digital journey. Once in market, highly targeted performance media campaigns will reach these customers with the right content at the right time and we are bringing more and more qualified customers to NETGEAR every day. Across all our marketing initiatives, our emphasis has been to bring these qualified customers to netgear.com, where we can carefully curate a purchase journey that highlights our products, technology-driven superiority and unparalleled performance. We leverage rich educational content, easy-to-use product selectors, live chat concierge service for real-time engagement with product experts and access to exclusive offers such as first look and purchase of new products like the Orbi Black Edition, the Nighthawk M6 and unique bundle offers that include value-added services and add-on satellites. And as we expand our premium product customer base, we can garner more insights into their lifestyles, their needs and wants and their preferred ways of communication, so we can further expand our penetration into this customer segment more broadly as time goes on. The investments we have made to help consumers discover, learn and shop for our super premium solutions by leveraging this strategy are paying off. As David mentioned, our Orbi 8 and 9 mesh sales are growing year-over-year in what is otherwise a declining overall consumer WiFi market. And we continue to see encouraging results from our marketing efforts. Some of the key wins include consumer awareness and engagement of the Orbi brand has increased over the last year. And over the last 12 months, our super premium Orbi and mobile hotspot products are the highest traffic commerce pages on netgear.com websites worldwide. On our netgear.com online store, average order value has increased 42% year-over-year and customers engaging with our concierge product experts result in even higher spend per order. The percentage of our direct-to-consumer sales over $1,000 has grown from 13% in Q3 '21 to over 38% in Q3 '22 and we expect that growth to continue with our marketing efforts and new product introductions. Since the launch of Orbi 9 in Q4 last year, NETGEAR has proven the potential of the super-premium category and our retail partners have taken notice. Those retailers who can also attract and convert premium customers are assorting our $1500 Orbi systems, joining us on the path to growth. So where do we go from here? Now that we have proven the potential of the premium retail segment, the go-forward plan to growth is clear. We will remain laser-focused on our brand building and marketing efforts to reach and acquire new customers to expand the penetration of this user base, further expand winning strategies to marketing efforts across the world, driving up earned, owned and paid initiatives. Continue to optimize our highly targeted performance media campaigns and grow our overall reach by applying incremental investments at the highest level of the funnel to capture net new customers, enhance our netgear.com customer journey and continue to deliver a differentiated and premium shopping experience. Work with our key retail channel partners to educate customers at the point of sale on the tremendous benefit of our super premium Orbi WiFi systems and continue to leverage our growing installed base of happy customers to help spread the word and share their positive experiences with others who are looking for advanced WiFi solutions through referral, loyalty, upgrade, concierge and other membership programs, we will amplify the networking effect from our satisfied customer base to their friends and families. And now I'd like to provide an update on the progress we are making in growing our subscription services business. We're continuing to see growing interest in the value-added services we offer that address consumer needs around security, privacy and support. NETGEAR Armor, smart parental controls and ProSupport are unique to NETGEAR and critical in providing 24/7 peace of mind for highly connected households in a world of always on Internet connectivity. Armor is the most comprehensive security solution available today. It is the only solution that is built into the router, so it automatically protects connected devices, including IoT throughout the home network from incoming attacks and outgoing anomalies. Armor protects against phishing and ransomware attacks, personal and sensitive information like credit card details being sent over in secure connections and it protects IoT devices from being hacked. For example, if your security camera starts sending your video to a completely new and suspicious site, Armor will block it. To date, Armor has protected over 27 million devices and this year alone has thoughted or blocked over 285 million attempts to attack, exploit, inject malware and fish for personal information or more. Customers are certainly seeing the value that the Armor solution provides. As David mentioned, premium Orbi customers have led the way in Armor adoption because of their heavy Internet usage and homes filled with many devices, including IoT. IoT devices are particularly vulnerable to targeting by cyber criminals as they are often left with default user names and passwords and unlike smart phones or laptops, customers cannot protect their IoT devices by installing typical antivirus software. In fact, over the last year, IoT cyber attacks have more than doubled and the number of IoT devices in smart homes around the world is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years and so too will the threat of cyber attacks. In addition, we've round out our suite of services with smart parental controls to manage screen time, promote healthy Internet habits and keep children safe and productive online. And ProSupport for customers that want the additional peace of mind to protect their purchase with extended warranty and ensure 0 downtime with a round-the-clock access to NETGEAR product experts for troubleshooting and support should they need help. There are various channels and stages of the purchase journey where customers become aware of our value-added services, pre-purchase as they research our products during the purchase process, either on netgear.com or through our channel partners and post-purchase during onboarding or after installation. As our primary destination for premium product sales, the netgear.com online store has proven very successful in attaching subscription services. It is here that we can present the full value of our product and service offerings with customers often attaching multiple services at the point of purchase and opting in for auto renewal. Some examples of the success we are seeing with subscriptions include; overall services attach across products is high at 50%. And for products over $500, the attach rate is 73% and for those buying solutions over $1,000, such as our Orbi8 and 9, it's 85%. And as we accelerate the growth of our direct-to-consumer sales worldwide, we expect to see this high attach rate on services increase further. The broader retail WiFi market where NETGEAR is the category leader and offers premium solutions at every price point such as our Nighthawk routers and Nighthawk and Orbi 7 Series mesh systems represents a significant opportunity to attach our services. For select channels like Best Buy, Amazon, Costco, we are offering bundles with one year of Armor included with product purchase. These exclusive offers are bringing us a significant pool of customers who are experiencing firsthand the value of Armor and gives us an opportunity to convert them to recurring revenue subscribers. For customers that choose a nonbundled product, we engage directly upon product installation via the app, encouraging activation of the Armor service through a 30-day trial. Engagement with our large installed base of existing customers is a high potential ongoing effort with most routers and mesh systems now supporting Armor and smart parental controls. This gives us the ability to offer them a trial activation. During the trial period, the value of Armor is demonstrated through effective marketing via e-mail, [indiscernible] and push notifications, driven by event-based triggers from the Armor product and continuous engagement via instant alerts sent to the Orbi or Nighthawk app when threats are blocked and when vulnerabilities are identified during network scans. And our data confirms that conversion and retention rates increase significantly, the more users engage with alerts via the app and visit the armor dashboard. We're also seeing growing adoption of our ProSupport offering, particularly in our premium products. ProSupport can be purchased through multiple direct channels and we are most successful in converting customers via our support center agents in app during the onboarding process and at the point of purchase on our netgear.com online store, where attach rates on premium products is over 40%. Over a 4-year period, which is the average replacement cycle of a router, we sell around 4 million to 5 million service capable routers and mesh systems. We exited Q3 approaching 700,000 subscribers. So what gives us the confidence that we can achieve our longer-term goal of 2 million subscribers, which would mean attaching a service to around 40% of a 5 million unit installed base. Well, based on the learnings and insights that got us to where we are today, we will focus our efforts in the following areas; acceleration of premium and direct-to-consumer sales worldwide. As I've already shared, attach rates on our premium products via our direct-to-consumer store are high, up to 80% and customers tend to attach multiple services at the point of purchase. Expand the funnel by bringing more customers who purchase through the channel into Armor trial activation. Our biggest expansion next year is to bring Armor to our fastest-growing product, the mobile hotspot. Leverage consumers purchasing our one-year bundle by further demonstrating the value of Armor via increased engagement with the product and effective marketing to increase retention rates. Service bundles are among our highest selling products in the channel, particularly within the Orbi family. And as the complexity of the home network continues to increase, along with the growth of IoT devices and concerns around security and consumer privacy, we will enhance our Armor service with additional privacy capabilities, driving higher conversion and retention rates and providing opportunities for ASP increase. In summary, we will remain laser-focused on targeted marketing efforts and delivering a seamless purchase journey to drive new customer acquisition and accelerate the growth of our high-margin premium products for the Connected Home business. And as we expand the penetration of the premium retail segment and become more effective in converting and retaining customers to long-term recurring revenue subscribers, we will increase our margins and profitability. Our goal is to exit 2023 with around 875,000 subscribers and longer term to reach $2 million. And now I would like to introduce Vikram Mehta, Senior Vice President of SMB to provide an update on our fast-growing ProAV business.

Hello, everyone. It's good to be back with you for our 2022 Analyst Day. My name is Vikram and I lead NETGEAR's SMB business. Since I last spoke to you, we've made tremendous progress in our SMB business. Our fiscal Q3 ended with record revenues, record growth and record contribution profit, despite geopolitical instability in Europe and parts of Asia, global inflationary pressures, depressed currencies, elongated supply chains and continued COVID-related disruptions. The SMB business is well ahead of all financial metrics through the first 3 quarters of 2022, principally because of the growth we've seen in the audiovisual over IP market. For the second consecutive year, our AV over IP business grew 80% in the third quarter. The AV with IP market is about purpose-built Ethernet network equipment that will reliably transport audio and video signals for a nearly endless list of video and audio rich applications. Thus far, our focus in the AV over IP market has centered around businesses serving applications like digital conference rooms, corporate recording studios, digital classrooms, event streaming, for example, sporting events, religious events or town hall meetings, robot-assisted surgical procedures, resort, casino, commercial video walls, digital signage of transportation hubs and retail storefronts, digital umpiring, data visualization for sporting and other events and digital green screens for the movie industry, just to name a few. And the reason that IP is fast overtaking HDMI as the protocol of choice for audio and video is because of its simplicity and extremely low cost. There is just no turning back as the world moves from ultra-high definition to 4K to 8K and beyond. Only IP provides an economical path to build out high performance and scalable AV networks. Fueling the growth of our commercial AV over IP business is a rich portfolio of managed Ethernet switch products that were specifically designed to the unique needs of the AV industry, low latency, low jitter, lost less transport of audio video signals, ports in the back and LED identifiers in the front, consistent with other AV equipment in a rack, APIs to allow seamless integration of our switches with other AV equipment, configuration presets that reduce AV deployment times by as much as 75% and the widest offering of AV specific protocols, including audio video bridging, dante, SDVoE and MDI. As a result, over 500 commercial AV integrators are taking advantage of the rich feature set of our AV liner switches, including their APIs and configuration preset capabilities to deliver reliable and more advanced AV solutions to their customers. At the end of fiscal Q3 2022, we're doing business with each of North America's 50 largest AV integrators. Internationally, we're doing business with the most prestigious names in the European and Asian AV integration market. And we've integrated our AV line of managed switches with equipment from over 170 different AV manufacturers from speakers to microphones, the mixers to amplifiers, to coders and encoders. Included amongst the list of 170 different manufacturers are AV powered houses like Crestron, Savant, Shore, [ QSC ], Sony, [ Hawkeye ], [ ZV ], [ Senhouser ] and Kramer, just to name a few. Today, business is large and small around the world, from a multitude of industries rely on NETGEAR's AV line of products to successfully integrate audio and video streams into their business workflows without compromising security and all while enhancing employee productivity. The AV over IP market extends well beyond transporting audio and video signals for a commercial enterprise. In the last 90 days or so, we've turned our attention to the residential custom integration market to further propel our AV over IP business. Take a look at this brief video to see how NETGEAR's custom AV line of products can make every home a smart home. [Presentation]

And it does not stop there. We're investing R&D resources in developing unique AV over IP products that will transform the TV broadcast industry. But more on that in our next Analyst Day meet-up in a year. We grew our AV over IP business more than 70% in 2021 despite COVID-induced supply chain disruptions. And we're on track to do it yet again in 2022 despite the myriad of geopolitical and economic challenges. The residential custom integration market and eventually the TV broadcast market presents us with unique opportunities to make our AV-over-IP business a multi-hundred million dollar business in the years to come. Thank you for your time and I wish you and your loved ones a safe and restful holiday season and the very best for 2023. And now I'd like to turn it over to our CFO, Bryan Murray.

Hello. I'm Bryan Murray, Chief Financial Officer of NETGEAR. I'd like to begin with a review of our anticipated 2022 performance relative to the expectations that we shared at this time a year ago, during our 2021 Analyst Day. From a top-line standpoint, our SMB business exceeded our expectations throughout the year, all in the face of continuing supply chain challenges. We expected this business to grow 10% for the year, but we believe we are on track to deliver over 17% growth for the year, enabled by the efforts of our operations team working tirelessly with our entire supply chain. From a product category standpoint, the growth has been led by our ProAV switching line of products, which continue to gain momentum as a multitude of AV applications upgrade to Ethernet-based platforms. As for CHP, we faced challenging market conditions, where we saw the U.S. consumer market, which was flat to 2019 levels earlier in the year, exit the third quarter down about 11% as macro environment headwinds started to weigh on consumers. This compares to expectations entering the year that the market would be 15% above pre-pandemic levels. This came with the added impact of many of our channel partners choosing to right size their inventory positions, further constraining the revenue within the CHP business. Embedded in this [ we have ] a number of bright spots that align with our strategic focus for this business within the premium portions of the market. Additionally, we are on track to meet our expected revenues from the service provider channel with supply constraints beginning to ease on 5G mobile hot spots. However, all of this points to revenues to be down roughly 20% year-on-year as compared to our expectations of them being flat a year ago. Looking at our non-GAAP operating margin performance and referencing current consensus of negative 1.6%, we will fall short of our expectations entering the year of 6% to 7% and non-GAAP operating margin. We encountered 2 primary challenges during the year that shaped this result. First, the CHP market further subsiding, primarily at the lower end of the market. As mentioned earlier, this had the added impact of retail partners cautiously contracting their inventory carrying levels. While our SME business outperformed expectations yet again, that wasn't enough to offset the lost top-line leverage that we had expected, costing us nearly 400 basis points as compared to our projections a year ago. Secondly, the cost of transportation increased beyond what we had thought heading into the year. And even when they started to drop off in the market, we were not able to realize the benefits, given we had carried close to 6 months of inventory throughout the year. This, coupled with the reduced leverage on the operational cost to support procurement of supply had a negative impact of approximately 250 basis points from what we had expected at the start of the year. As we look towards 2023, we see the market cost of sea transportation rapidly improving as we exit 2022 with expectations that it will settle at a level of approximately 1.5x what pre-pandemic costs were. We think relative to 2022, this will be about 300 basis point improvement to our non-GAAP operating margins with that impact enhanced by approximately 100 basis points as we look to further reduce air freight from 2022 levels. We also expect to add another 100 basis points from improved SMB mix and top-line leverage. We remain focused on 4 very promising market opportunities that we believe will drive our top line and pave the way to improve profitability. The first such opportunity is Pro AV. And as you heard from Vikram, there continues to be strong momentum in this space, already reaching an annualized level of $120 million in the third quarter of 2022. We still believe there's a long way to go here as we continue to be limited by supply in this category, but are confident we can grow our SMB revenue by another $100 million in the next 3 years. On the CHP side, the super-premium mesh represented by our Orbi [ 8 and Orbi 9 ], which today starts at $650 for a 2 pack continues to outperform the broader market. We've seen double-digit year-on-year growth throughout the year, while the broader retail market has been down around 25%. We believe we have a huge lead in radio frequency analogue antenna and system design over our competitors and intend to use this to capitalize on future technology inflections such as WiFi 7. As David said, we intend to introduce Orbi 10, utilizing WiFi 7 with a penta band antenna design. We intend to continue to raise the ASP entry point for this category and to erect a higher barrier to entry with even more sophisticated antenna design and mesh software architecture. We will continue to protect our IP with filing of patents in these areas. Additionally, we continue to see strong momentum in part due to an improved supply picture for our 5G mobile hot spots, both in the service provider channel as well as in the retail channel and our own direct-to-consumer stores. And for the subscription services, we see continuous incremental revenue opportunity in the next 3 years, as our customers grow more conscious about security and privacy. These 4 growth areas will be the driving forces of our top-line growth in 2023 and beyond. We do see a couple of factors driving seasonality of our top line in 2023, starting with our CHP business, expecting our retail channel partners to continue their efforts to reduce their inventory carrying positions with much of these efforts expected in the first half of the year. Additionally, we would expect a little more linearity to the service provider revenue in 2023 as compared to 2022 as a result of an improved supply picture. Additionally, while we expect some easing, we do believe we will face supply challenges in our SME business for the first half of the year, with anticipated improvement in the second half. Accordingly, we expect the first and second quarter revenues to be down approximately 10% to Q4 2022 and then see a low to mid-teen percentage increase in the second half relative to the first half of the year. We continue to be excited about the margin opportunity provided by our services business. As you heard Heidi share some of the exciting efforts that we are planning for in 2023 and beyond, we expect services to be a meaningful contributor to our overall operating margin performance. With our ever more effective marketing of our service offerings, we believe we will expand our subscriber count to over 875,000 exiting 2023, with our ARPU holding at around $50, this would have us on an annualized revenue pace of approximately $45 million, with over 50% gross margins. As we continue to work towards milestones, such as 1 million subscribers, which we believe we can reach in the next couple of years and our long-term target of 2 million subscribers, you can appreciate the margin expansion opportunity this business offers, especially as we find opportunities to increase ARPU by increasing the value of these services to our customers. As we project to return to a level of profitability, coupled with plans to further reduce our inventory carrying position, we would expect to generate free cash flow around 200% of non-GAAP net income in 2023. As we look at uses of our cash, there are really 3 main areas of focus. First, will be operational uses and investments in R&D with a more focused investment in those areas of growth, namely, super premium WiFi mesh systems, 5G mobile hot spots, Pro EV managed switches and subscription services. Secondly, M&A, as we continue to look for strategic assets that can further our growth in any of these 4 growth areas. Lastly, you can see we have meaningful repurchases of our common stock with $123 million spent in less than 3 years' time or over 85% of the free cash flow generated over this time. Under our current authorization, we have 2.5 million shares remaining under our current program. I wanted to revisit and summarize some of the opportunities and headwinds that we see heading into this next year before providing our 2023 outlook. In the near term, we are faced with a more challenging macroeconomic environment with inflationary pressures weighing in consumer spending, especially on those products, not in the super-premium category. We believe this has the added impact of retail channel partners compressing their inventory carrying levels to nearly half what they were historically. We also expect to continue to face supply constraints on some of our SMB offerings, most dramatically on our ProAV line of products, which we expect to continue through the first half of 2023. That said, we are very encouraged by some of the tailwinds that will support our growth and profitability in 2023 and beyond. To start, we continue to see the super-premium portion of the CHP market growing, while the rest of the market is in decline. This segment carries higher product margins with very little competition, if any. Additionally, we continue to see double-digit growth in our higher-margin SMB business, largely driven by the impressive momentum in the ProAV space as Vikram touched on, along with less reliance on airfreight, especially in the second half of 2023. Lastly, we see meaningful improvement in the cost of normal sea transportation and a supply chain lead time that is starting to compress both based on improving availability of components as well as shortening transportation time lines. While we take this opportunity to provide overall full year outlook for 2023, we do so with the caveat that we are still dealing with a challenging marketplace with a number of risks and uncertainties. I would urge you to look through our most recent filing with the SEC, which details these risks. From a top-line standpoint, we expect 2023 revenue to be up low to mid-single digits as compared to 2022. From 2024 on, we expect we'll be able to maintain mid- to high single-digit top line growth. We expect with continued growth in SMB, which carries higher margins, continued growth in premium CHP products, further expansion from subscription services revenue and reduced transportation costs, we will achieve improved gross margins. We also expect to continue to reduce expenses in areas of the business that are declining and reinvest those resources to drive the areas of growth. Accordingly, we expect our non-GAAP operating margin to be in the range of 1% to 2% in the first half of 2023 and 5% to 6% in the second half. Also, we believe our non-GAAP tax rate to be approximately 24% in 2023. We expect to generate free cash flow at a rate of 200% of non-GAAP net income. And last but not least, we expect to exit the year with approximately 875,000 subscribers of our value-added service offerings. Looking at the longer-term model, the continuous double-digit growth of the 4 areas, namely super premium mesh WiFi, 5G mobile hot spots, ProAV and subscription services combined should enable us to aim for mid-to-high single-digit overall compound annual revenue growth. While we're aiming to get to 1 million paid subscribers in the next couple of years, we do believe we can go beyond that with an aim to reach 2 million, which propels us towards the target non-GAAP double-digit operating margin. The more progress we can make in these 4 growth areas, the more robust our non-GAAP operating margin will be. Our goal is to march towards 15% or even beyond. With that, I will turn it back over to Patrick.

Thank you, team. I think you will be just as excited as I am looking at the 4 really robust growth areas, which are all high margin with much less competition, if any, and we'll have many, many years of run rate to continue to grow. So with further ado, I would like to start the interactive Q&A session. So operator, please start queuing up the questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Adam Tindle from Raymond James.

I just wanted to maybe start with a clarification, Bryan on the Q1 and Q2 revenue. You talked about it being down 10% from Q4. Does that mean down 10% in Q1, then down another 10% in Q2? Or are you saying that both of these quarters are about the same dollar amount, which is down 10% from Q4. If I did the math right, it's like $220 million?

Go ahead, Bryan.

Yes -- actually we do expect Q1 will be down off of Q4 by about 10%. As we said about a month ago, we do expect the trend of retailers compressing their channel inventories to continue. That's obviously factored in there. And then as we go into Q2, we would expect Q2 to be relatively flat to Q1, which is somewhat in line with normal seasonality, but continue with those same channel inventory compression trends in the first half of the year. So Q1 down 10% to Q4 and Q2, flat to Q1.

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And I guess the follow-up would be last time revenue was at $220 million or so, like you're talking about was Q2 of 2022. And during that quarter, operating margin was minus 2%. Today, you're guiding to a positive 1% to 2% at that same dollar revenue of $11 level of revenue for Q1 and Q2. Maybe just help us with the differences at this dollar level of revenue this time versus Q2 of 2022, if that makes sense?

Yes. Bryan, go ahead.

Sure. Yes. The big driver, as I noted in the presentation there is where we're at with transportation costs. We came into '22 expecting to see some improvement. I would say it was more or less in line through the first 3 quarters, but a notable decrease in transportation cost in Q4 and current market [ has been ] seen. And we'll start to realize that pretty much immediately with the SMB business, given that we're still pretty light on inventory. CHP, we continue to hold about 6 months of inventory. And so it's a little bit slower to take effect, but that's the big driver that you would see in terms of year-on-year improvement.

Okay. One last one for me because [ it sounds ] like Patrick is itching to answer a question. So Patrick to you. But -- so I just want to talk about that focus on the premium WiFi segment, which is interesting and makes sense. That's where the margin is. But as I understand that market, that customer tends to be the affluent customer and tends to be more apt to be focused on a kind of red carpet do-it-for-me professional install type of a delivery method. Today, you're talking about using more DTC and more of a DIY approach. So how to penetrate that affluent customer base that's used to more of a professional install with your strategy of going DTC and more of a do-it-yourself strategy? Does that make sense?

That totally makes sense. And we totally agree with you. So when we say the affluent customers, as you heard a little bit more from David and from Heidi, this group of customers starts with household income of $150,000. And of course, it would scale all the way up that people are making tens of millions of dollars of income a year. So it's actually segregated into 2 segments within this. I would argue that for most of those households making $150,000 to $0.5 million, they tend to be willing to spend thousands of dollars to outfit their home WiFi and be willing to do it yourself. And actually, we do supply installation services in select markets. But then for those people, about $0.5 million income or more, you're right. They would like to have red carpet, white glove services, and that's why we're doing a 2-pronged approach. With the CHP do-it-yourself, netgear.com, we're primarily targeting those with $150,000, maybe up to $1 million household income who intend to do do-it-yourself and who intend to spend thousands of dollars to outfit their WiFi homes. But then beyond that, you heard that Vikram is saying that we're starting a new endeavor with the ProAV partners such as [ Savant ], such as Crestron Home to really target those Red Carpet, white glove service to outfit those multimillion-dollar homes for the extreme wealthy, not just want to have WiFi but have everything automated in the house with full AV experience around the house, as we described in that video that we showed during the SMB section. So you're absolutely right. We're targeting both, but we're using different product categories. For those people who would like to spend just thousands of dollars, we use the premium Orbi do-it-yourself web stores, netgear.com with installation services. But for those people who say, "Hey, do it all for me, I want to go beyond just WiFi, but with the entire automation and AV, then we're partnering with Crestron and with Savant to really do the whole home automation with the SMB ProAV business, which included both Ethernet as well as access points. I hope that answers your questions.

It does. It's very helpful, Patrick. That's it for me. I'm sure, Bryan, somebody else will take on the back half of 2024 assumptions on that [indiscernible]. So I'll let somebody else do that one.

Okay.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Hamed Khorsand from Beating Wall Street.

So first off, I just want to talk about the ProAV. It sounds like the TAM has expanded exponentially since you first rolled out the service. How is that going to keep competitors away from what you're seeing in this marketplace?

That's a good question, Hamed, and I'll let Vikram to answer that. Go ahead, Vikram. It does sound like that we're hearing Vikram saying anything.

Sorry about that. Well, Hamed, thanks for your question there. First and foremost, we have a head start. On the competition when it comes to integrating our products with other AV equipment. We've invested in this area for a number of years now, and that's paying handsome dividends. And we're not stopping. We're doubling down in that particular area. And secondly, when you look at some of the more traditional networking companies, we are really focused on a different set of opportunities. They are going into the SaaS space, they're going into a whole different set of areas. So I think we've got tremendous amount of growth opportunity ahead of us, and we think this business can be just as large as the entire SMB business is today before the turn of this decade.

Yes. I'd just like to supplement what -- I just wanted to supplement what Vikram just said, right. The R&D involved, the software development involved to make this business seamless for our partners is not trivial. So there are only a few of our competitors on the IT side, who have the capability to invest that, namely Cisco and HP Enterprise. But to them, even though the market is attractive to us, it still might be too small for them. And then for the other vendors who would like to come in, I don't think that they have the R&D capabilities and budget and sustainability to really go to get anywhere close because we're already 3 to 4 years ahead of everybody else, we'll make it 5 to 6 years ahead of everybody else. So that's the market dynamic. We do believe that there will be competitors attracted to this market. But we were way ahead of them, and it will be very difficult for our competitors to really nimble away from our market share.

And how are you adjusting the business to supply chain issues with ProAV?

Yes. We're working very closely with our main chip supplier Broadcom on really allocating more to us. But at the same time, I think the most important thing is for us to roll over our chips use into the newer technology where there is more capacity coming online. We would be able to start rolling over the chips in mid-next year from 55 nanometers to 28 nanometers or even 18 nanometers. So you'll see that supply chain bottleneck easing in the second half of next year when we roll our chip technology to the newer ones with more capacity. So that's the strategy that we're using.

Okay. My last question was about the hot spots. Given the price points -- are you including the sales at the [ 799 level ] and those price points within the CHP business? Or is that going into service provider? And how are you adjusting for service providers also having other subsidized hot spots available?

Well, we are assuming the mobile hot spot -- premium hot spot mobile in 2 channels. The service provider channel as well as the retail channels. And both are owned by CHP. So no matter where we sell these premium mobile hot spots it is still part of CHP's revenue. The growth we're seeing primarily on the retail channel -- and on the retail channel, as David explained, there are quite a few opportunities for us to further expand the retail channel sales of these mobile spots, which will be used by customers beyond just our AT&T and Telstra in Australia, AT&T and the U.S. because there will be other operators that our retail customers would be able to use by buying these mobile spots. So David, would you like to supplement more information?

Yes, Patrick, I think you've covered it pretty well. I think that there is a customer out there who is valuing that it's unlocked that they can choose the operator that they'd like to use rather than buying directly from the operator. And so for that reason, we're providing both markets selling directly to the operators, but also giving that flexibility for those who want to select their own data plan, select their own operator or even switch midway through.

Yes. Furthermore, in a lot of the rural areas where they are using other hot spots to really speed up the Internet because the wired Internet is limited to DSL, 25 megabits per second in the rural areas that -- various rural areas have various coverage from operators. There are rural areas that are premiumly covered by Verizon and there are some others that are covered primarily by T-Mobile. So they would not be able to get the mobile hot spots from AT&T together with the service and an unlocked version is the only alternative for them. So we're seeing quite a few of those customers coming in. And then, of course, you have customers who are jet setters who would travel internationally, and they would like to use the local SIM cards. So [ there's ] other applications.

[Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference back over to Patrick for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us again on this day for our December 2022 Analyst Day. As I said, I'm very excited about the market growth opportunities of those 4 growth areas. And I hope that you are just as excited as me in terms of the progress we are making in executing the strategy around those 4 growth areas. And we do believe that [indiscernible] continue to be market challenges from the economic standpoint, from the uncertainty standpoint in 2023. However, we believe that the execution will help us to really revive our top-line growth as well as bringing our bottom line back into healthy territory, especially in the second half of next year [ and ] 2024 and beyond, the future will look even brighter. And I would absolutely update everybody in the next year's Analyst Day of our progress in 2023 and the excitement of 2024 and beyond. So looking forward to seeing you all on the next Analyst Day. Thank you, and happy holidays, everybody.