Hello, everyone. My name is David. Welcome to the Viavi Solutions fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2023 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there'll be a question and answer session. I'll now turn the conference over to Henk Derksen, Viavi Solutions CFO. Please begin. Thank you, David, and welcome to Viavi Solutions fourth quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings call. My name is Henk Derksen, Viavi Solutions CFO. Also joining me on today's call is Oleg Khaykin, our President and CEO. Please note that this call will include forward-looking statements about the company's financial performance. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations and estimations. We encourage you to review our most recent annual report and SEC filings, particularly the risk factors described in those filings. The forward-looking statements, including guidance we provide during this call, are valid only as of today. Viavi undertakes no obligation to update these statements. Please also note that unless we state otherwise, all results except revenue are non-GAAP. We reconcile these non-GAAP results to our preliminary GAAP financials and discuss their usefulness and limitations in today's earnings release. The release, plus our supplemental earnings slides, which include historical financial tables, are available on Viavi's website at www.investor.viavisolutions.com. We are recording today's call, and we'll make the recording available by 4:30 P.M. Pacific Time this evening on our website. Let's start with our quarterly financial results. Fiscal Q4 revenue came in at $263.6 million, slightly ahead of the high end of our guidance range of $242 million to $262 million. Up sequentially by 6.4% and down 21.4% year, on a year-over-year basis. Operating profit margin of 11.7%, near the high end of our guidance range of 10%-12.4%, increased by 30 basis points from the prior quarter and decreased 9.6% from the prior year result of leverage on lower revenues. EPS at $0.10 ended above the high end of the guidance range of $0.07-$0.09, up $0.02 sequentially and down $0.14 year-over-year. The current share count was 223.6 million during the quarter, down from 231.3 million shares in the prior year. Cash flow from operations was $23.5 million for the fourth quarter, versus $73.6 million in the prior year period. Fiscal 2023 was a challenging year for Viavi. The full year revenues decreased from record levels of $1.3 billion in 2022 to $1.1 billion in fiscal 2023, down 14.4%, a result of an overall slowdown in service providers, network equipment manufacturer, and semiconductor spend. NSE full year fiscal revenue came in at $801.2 million, down 15.6% year-over-year from $949.1 million. OSP also experienced contraction as central banks digested currency inventory builds during COVID, reducing revenues from $343.3 million in 2022 to $304.9 million in fiscal 2023, or down 11.2%. Mainly because of lower revenues, Viavi's full year 2023 operating profit margin at 15.6%, declined 6.6% from 22.2% in 2022. Within our NSE segment, operating profit margins declined 8% from 15.6% in 2022 to 7.6% in 2023. Within our OSP operating profit margins reduced from 40.5% in 2022 to 36.5% in 2023, which also includes the impact of start-up costs related to our new facility in Chandler. Full year, 2023 EPS at $0.55, decreased 42.1% or $0.40 from record EPS levels of $0.95 in 2022. Despite headwinds, cash flow from operations for the full year continued to be solid, as we generated $114.1 million in fiscal 2023, and $63 million in free cash flow, compared to $105.6 million free cash flow in fiscal 2022. While further improving our balance sheet by retiring the remaining 2023 convertible notes and partly exchanging the 2024 notes comparable terms. We continue to execute on our capital allocation strategy. Deployed $83.9 million towards our share repurchase program, and $67.3 million towards acquisitions. Average share count during the year, reduced from 231.3 million to 223.6 million shares. As a result, the change in short-term outlook early in fiscal 2023, we announced a restructuring program in February of this year, that culminated into a reduction of approximately 5% of the labor force, with a non-recurring expense of $12 million. This is expected to result in net operating expense savings of $28 million on annual basis. Finalization of this plan is below our original expected non-recurring expense of $15 million, and better than originally anticipated savings commitment of $25 million. Reduced levels of OpEx, in combination with an improved capital structure, will allow us to benefit from more meaningful operating and financial leverage as revenue recovers. Now moving to our reported Q4 results by business segment, starting with NSE. NSE revenue came in at $197.9 million, exceeded our expectations of $179 million-$195 million, albeit down 19.6% year-over-year. NE revenue of $173.3 million improved 15.8% sequentially, and declined 22% year-over-year. SE revenue at $24.6 million increased 2.5% from last year. NSE gross profit margin at 62.1%, decreased by 280 basis points year-over-year. Within NSE, NE gross profit margins at 61.5%, decreased 270 basis points from the prior year, primarily due to leverage on lower volume in combination with product mix. SE gross profit margins at 66.3%, decreased 500 basis points from last year, primarily due to unfavorable product mix. NSE's operating profit margin at 5.8%, was near the high end of our guidance range of 3%-6%. Turning to OSP. Fourth quarter revenue at $65.7 million, ended up slightly ahead of the midpoint of our guidance range of $63 million-$67 million, and down 26.3% year-over-year. Gross profit margin at 46.6%, decreased 9.3% year-over-year, slightly lower than expected, mainly a result of leverage on lower revenue. That the Chandler start-up costs are behind us, and as revenue returns, we expect the gross profit margins to normalize to historical levels. The operating profit margin of 29.5% came in slightly below the guidance range of 30%-31%, and declined 9.1% year-over-year. Turning to the balance sheet. The ending balance of our total cash and short-term investments was $525.6 million, down $39.3 million compared to the prior year. During the fourth quarter, the company repaid the remaining $68.1 million principal value of 2023 convertible notes, as well as a $0.6 million semi-annual interest payment, for a total of $68.7 million. At the end of the fourth quarter, 2023, we're left with an outstanding balance of $96.4 million on the 2024 convertible notes, that we are planning to pay down with cash on the balance sheet during the upcoming quarters. Our balance sheet is strong. We improved the quality of our debt by reducing our convertible notes exposure, adding long-term fixed rate debt, and as a result, extended maturities at a lower cost. As mentioned earlier, operating cash flow for the quarter was $23.2 million, an increase of $5.4 million from the prior quarter, and a decrease of $50.4 million year-over-year. In addition, we invested $7.4 million in capital expenditures during the quarter, compared to $10.8 million in the prior quarter, prior year quarter. During fiscal Q4, in addition to retiring convertible notes, as mentioned before, we repurchased 1 million shares of common stock for $10 million under the current share repurchase program. On a full year basis, we repurchased 7.3 million shares of common stock for a total of $83.9 million, returned over 100% of free cash flow generation in fiscal 2023 to our common shareholders. As you may recall, in September, we announced that the board authorized a new common stock repurchase program for up to $300 million. As of the beginning of fiscal 2024, we have $234 million available under this program. On to our guidance. We expect fiscal quarter 2024 revenue to be in the range of $240 million-$260 million. Operating profit margins is expected to be 13.5%, ±70 basis points. An anticipated improvement of 180 basis points sequentially, and EPS to be between $0.09 and $0.11. We expect NSE revenue to be approximately $175 million, ±$8 million, with an operating profit margin of 4%, ±100 basis points. OSP revenue is expected to be approximately $75 million, ±$2 million, with an operating profit margin of 35.5%, ±50 basis points. Our tax expense is expected to be around $8 million or 26% for the first quarter, a result of jurisdictional mix. We expect our income expenses to reflect a net expense of approximately $4 million. The share count is expected to be around 224 million shares. With that, I will turn the call over to Oleg. Thank you, Henk. During 2023 fiscal fourth quarter, we saw initial signs of stabilization and gradual recovery. Despite the slowdown in overall service provider spend, some service providers have begun to free up funds for network maintenance and optimization, which benefits Viavi's NSE business segment. As a result, our fiscal fourth quarter revenue came in slightly above the higher end of our guidance. We expect the stabilization and recovery momentum to continue throughout the fiscal year. NSE revenue declined year-on-year, but grew sequentially, driven primarily by our NE business segment. NE was up double-digits% sequentially, reflecting a rebound in demand from cable service providers upgrading their networks. Demand for 11 production test equipment from wireless and fiber NEMs and semiconductor companies, saw gradual recovery from the lows in the March quarter. AvComm business continued to perform well, driven by robust demand from the avionics and mil-aero customers. Our SE business segment grew 2.5% year-over-year, in line with our expectations. Turning to OSP. The OSP demand environment continues to be challenging. That said, the fourth quarter revenue came in slightly better than expected, helped by stronger demand for anti-counterfeiting products. 3D sensing revenue was impacted by seasonally lower demand for smartphones and the supply chain transition to new phone models. Fiscal 2023 was a very challenging year for Viavi. Early in the fiscal year, NSE demand experienced a rapid slowdown in orders from service providers. The slowdown pattern was broad-based across all customers and geographies. The slowdown in spend by service providers spread to the network equipment manufacturers and semiconductor companies, further impacting demand for our NSE products. The OSP business unit started the fiscal year strong, but saw demand for its two major products impacted by macroeconomic headwinds. The demand for anti-counterfeiting products was impacted by the inventory corrections as governments dialed back fiscal stimulus, and 3D sensing was impacted by weaker demand for smartphones. Despite the disappointing year, Viavi continued to invest in new technologies and applications, expanding into higher growth markets such as resilient PNT, and initiated and completed the restructuring program to reduce expenses. These initiatives, combined with our strong position in our traditional markets, are expected to result in strong operating and financial leverage as our revenue rebounds. In conclusion, I'd like to thank my Viavi team for managing in this challenging environment, and express my appreciation to our customers and shareholders for their support. With that, I will now turn it back to operator for Q&A. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To allow everyone an opportunity, we ask that you please limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. We'll take our first question from Mehdi Hosseini with Susquehanna. Your line's open. Yes, thanks for taking my question. I just want to go back to your comment regarding service providers. To what extent do you have visibility? Are we reaching a point where your guide reflect a minimum investment? Then on the optical side, just curious to hear what you think with the upcoming product cycle in the smartphone, how do you see that compared to the prior year upgrades? Thank you, Mehdi. The first one is, you know, let's put it this way, there are signs of life in multiple discussions with service providers. I mean, it took them about six months to put a hold and, you know, cancel backlog and a lot of CapEx. When we announced in October, remember, they can effectively zero us out within one month because it's mainly coming out of OpEx. For a lot of big capital items, they have normally a six-month lead time that they cannot cancel. As of March quarter, pretty much all the big spend has been put under control and a lot of the backlog has been, CapEx been pushed out. Now that as they are stepping back, they're looking, okay, well, I still got to run my network. There's things accumulating and people are screaming for supplies. We're seeing more and more conversation around, upgrading equipment and the, providing their, you know, a network maintenance and optimization, folks with tools to, manage the network. I think, you know, if you asked me that question, let's say three, four months ago, it was all crickets. You know, there's silence. I said it was silence. Right now, there's clearly some are more, dynamic and aggressive than the others. Like I say, cable guys are actually very, aggressive in, up-upgrading their networks. Also we're seeing, a select, mobile network and, fiber network operators are returning back and, doing, optimization and upgrade. I think, this momentum will continue to pick up, through our, our fiscal year. Now, with respect to the 3D sensing, I'd say this coming year, I mean, it's kinda hard to predict the coming year. I mean, the market for our prime application is fairly saturated. I mean, we're now in both front and rear cameras. Really, the revenue is really driven more by total market demand, and I think what we are seeing is somewhat more sluggish smartphone demand than we saw, let's say, a year ago. I think in that respect, we're taking a more cautious outlook on the volumes that are gonna be demanded this fiscal year. Can I ask a follow-up question? Sure. Just, just looking into calendar year 2024, I, I wanna hear your opinion in, in terms of the catalyst. I personally don't see an, an urge to install equipment or upgrade equipment for 5G+. There is plenty of fiber underground. What else could happen with service provider, with cable operators that could at least entice them for some technology upgrade? Tell me if I'm not thinking. Sure. About this the right way. I think, you know, I tend to agree with you, but remember, we don't depend. Actually, our business is driven more by turning on what you already got and starting to putting it into exploitation, right? In that respect, yes, there's plenty fiber in the ground, there's plenty equipment in the warehouse, but every time you turn on a circuit or you put it in, in production or put, put the equipment into exploitation, you do need field operations to do the work. You know, the maintenance of the network and things like that are an ongoing thing. As you have bad weather or you have wear and tear, you constantly got to be doing something to your network. In that respect, we are more, more money gets spent on OpEx to get more of what you got. That's actually very good for us. When somebody's building network, it's very good for us. What's not so good for us is when they are kinda in between. I think the, I think service providers had to take the equipment deliveries they took. They probably now have a bit access of the equipment, some of it sitting in a warehouse, but little by little, once you have it, you got to put it into operation, and that's what's driving demand for our products. Now, the second element is competition. All it takes is your biggest competitor announce that they're gonna be more aggressive than they, than you are. Well, whether you want it or not, you're gonna have to respond, appropriately. We're seeing in, in at least in the more, mobile, mobile space, it's a three-way, you know, the proverbial Mexican standoff. When you have more than two strong operators, there is a very strong tendency to cheat, try to, do a little more, and of course, the other two are watching. I think, you know, as much as everybody in their logic says, "Hey, we're better off doing nothing, if we all agree on it," it's inevitably takes one person to try to pull a fast one, and the rest respond accordingly. Now, in case of the, I think, cable operators, they're seeing it as a very good opportunity for them, since I think many of them are healthier than telecom operators. I think they have they're taking an opportunity to upgrade the speeds on their network to be more competitive against the fiber, and definitely try to try to avoid, you know, wireless broadband, stealing their customers. I think, you know, the competitive pressure is probably the single biggest thing that keeps a service provider spending money, whether they want it or not. Okay, great. Thanks for the details. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we'll go to Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital. Your line's open. Hi, good afternoon. A couple of questions here. You know, first, I'm guess I'm trying to reconcile your commentary about, you know, stabilization and growth throughout the year with your Q1 guide for NSE, where, you know, you got it down a fair bit after a better than expected, Q4. Anything, you know, going on in there that, that would, would reconcile those two seemingly, seemingly conflicting comments? Then I'll, you know, or you see, you know, seasonality in the first part of your, you know, fiscal year or, what have you, and I'll follow up from there. I mean, if you take the, I would say, last couple of years out, where, during COVID, there was a supply constraint. Customers wanted to take product, every, anytime you could deliver it. I think in that respect, the, the usual seasonality that we have in NSE, whereas you have March and September are the down quarters, and June and December are the stronger quarters. That was like for the last couple of years, it almost became a non-event because, whenever you had a product, somebody wanted to take it. I see with the, lead times, collapsing and effectively you can place the usual order and take delivery within the same quarter. We see the ordering cadences back to what traditionally was, whereas where the September and March quarters are generally the lower end, lower end of the demand range, and the June and December are the higher end of the demand range. I think what we see is, I'm, you know, I'm aware it's, it's all within, I would call, normal way of business. Clearly, a run rate is not as high as it was a year ago, but it's following the same kind of fluctuations. Also I'm looking at the booking funnel and the, you know, opportunity funnel, and it is a hell of a lot healthier than I would say it was in the March quarter of this year, where everything was just shut down. The level of conversations, the engagements, negotiation that is going on, it leads to expectations that we're going to see continuous gradual recovery. The second element is the NAMs and semiconductor companies. After retrenching in the first half of the calendar year, we are seeing the competitive pressure and new product introduction driving continuous quarter on quarter increase in the lab spend. That's obviously the second element of our NSE business that was kind of down. It was about a quarter lagging the service providers when it went down, and I think it's finally starting to come back, also about lagging about by a quarter of the service providers. The last but not the least, I think the, on our service enablement business, the software business, we feel pretty good about the momentum and the opportunity funnel that we are seeing for our new solutions. In that respect, I mean, even though those things take longer lead times to go from booking into revenue, it's nevertheless a positive momentum. Got it. The follow-up, I don't know if this is contributing to this improving funnel, either on the service provider side, or NEM side, but, you know, what are you seeing around 800G and a high-speed connectivity, either inside or outside the data center, in terms of current trends for Viavi? I think that is a very-- so that's, you know, I remember we've been selling 800G into lab for quite a while. It's now moving to what I would call production, although still there's a lot of tests, there's a lot of, you know, fiber operators. I mean, there's both, actually. I mean, I'm not so sure how much there's an 800G right now happening in the data center, but we are seeing a lot of interest from the fiber operators to test and, you know, play with the 800G to interconnect various data centers. I mean, right now, it's at the, in the 400G as a norm, but there's early discussions and testing going on with the 800G, and some are talking about terabits. I don't know, a terabit is maybe a little too far out, but 800G is something that is on the drawing board. Right now, the name of the game is 400G within the network. That's what's shipping today. The 800G is really more around the, how it's called, even though it's been in the lab for a while with service providers, and it's really select service providers, not the mainstream. This is now entering what's called testing, proof of concept stage. Those are usually also service providers that are very tight strapped for cash and liquidity, but when it comes to that, this is one area they want to spend the money. Their idea is if they can directly interconnect hyperscale data centers without bypassing third parties, they feel they can grab some good business. Okay. Thanks very much. Sure. Okay, next, we'll go to Michael Genovese with Rosenblatt Securities. Your line's open. great. I think so. Oleg, I want to follow up on Tim's questions. you know, first of all, with 800G inside the data center, in, in, for instance, AI clusters, I think we thought that there were design wins that you maybe spoke about mid-quarter. so, you know, maybe the I, I mean, my understanding was maybe it's not driving the current business, but it's a, an interesting growth driver for the future. Are we, are we understanding that correctly, or are we ahead of ourselves there? Well, I mean, this is. You know, when we talk about design wins, it's usually a NEM that's selling equipment that they are using in the lab and in production to do both. One is produce the systems, and second, produce the modules to those systems. But I don't think this is, at least this quarter, was that much of a demand in that respect. But- Okay. We are seeing end market interest for that. Okay. I just, you know, I guess I wanna follow up on Tim's other question and then, and then ask my question. I just have one. But the follow-up would be like, I just wanna crystallize that. I think what I heard is that the upside in NE in the June quarter largely came from cable. Even though that the funnel of business opportunities is greatly improved versus, you know, six and nine months ago, the NE guide is sequentially down because of seasonality and not for any other reason. Is that generally right? Yes, that's pretty much right. I would say, you know, I would say the upside, I mean, came clearly cable, but we also had some major wireless NEMs doing their annual purchase. We have several major NEMs that at various parts during the year take significant deliveries. Okay. This is my question, and I know you don't give guidance more than a quarter at a time, unless you're giving, you know, three-year CAGRs. But, you know, if 2022 was a $1.3 billion and, you know, in the $0.90s of non-GAAP sense, and then this last year was $1.1 and below $0.60, I'm just wondering, I mean, we've got the 1st quarter guide, and it is what it is, but, you know, there's this sense that things should strengthen throughout the year. I mean, do you, do you envision this year sort of looking in between those two years or, or more like one or the other? If, you know, if you could comment, any kind of thoughts there. Well, it's yeah. The way I look at it, usually, you know, you have a year, you're starting strong, and then it gets weak, because then our fiscal year ends in June, right? Now if you take the opposite mirror image, like kind of the first half of the year, as it continues to recover, it's almost like you end up with the two mirror images of the same thing. If you think about, you know, 2023 fiscal year was slightly about $1.1 billion. I mean, from our, you know, purely. You know, you're right, we cannot see beyond one quarter. As we, but we have to operate to a certain scenario. We're taking a fairly conservative look. Let's say, hey, let's say this year will be demand-wise, a mirror image of the prior year, so our exit velocity would be equal to the entry velocity of the prior fiscal year. Now we are doing it with a much lower operating cost structure and a smaller outstanding share count. You then you overlay the operating and financial leverage onto it, right? That shows you, okay, even if at like roughly flattish up top line, you're gonna see a nice growth at the EPS level. That's how we operationally thinking about upcoming fiscal 2024. Great. Thank you very much. Helpful. Good. Okay. Next, we'll go to Alex Henderson with Needham. Your line's open. Great, a couple of, just simple operational stuff. Has the benefit of the improved production out of Chandler, Arizona, now, you know, been fully feathered into the margins on OSP? Yes, sure. Chandler is now running in production, so all the startup costs are behind it, the startup yields and optimization, it's all behind it. Now as the volume increases, all the unabsorbed expenses are being absorbed. It's clearly, you know, whatever the gross margin drag we were getting ahead of time is now behind us. June to September in OSP, in, in that production facility is fairly stable on the margin side? It's already steady state, yes. Perfect. Second, the cost-cutting, you know, moves that you've done, those are fully in the June quarter? They are partly in the June quarter. They will be fully in the September quarter. The full quarter impact, you will see in the September quarter. Yeah. We're planning with OpEx levels of, call it $118 million, $120 million per quarter, for the September quarter. That's the run rate going forward, obviously, with some seasonality to it? Absolutely. With some seasonality to it, and as revenue recovers, there's some variable costs, but you should think of that as the run rate. On the OSP side, can you, can you characterize whether we're, you know, on the, the, the, the counterfeiting products, at a point where we're at baseline, or are we below baseline, or how do we, how do we, you know, characterize that? Historically, you've, you've talked about a baseline, and then you'd have these spikes above it. You're talking about it being down from last year because of absorption, but isn't it-- wasn't it above normal, and therefore, we're, we're kind of back to baseline here? Well, I think the baseline has gone up over the years, right? In terms of the, when you're talking baseline, you're talking about revenue, not the cost, right? Yeah. I'm talking about revenue. I think this year, we, we believe, it's running below the baseline because of the, you know, the two- it's a two-for effect. On one hand, the fiscal stimulus has ended. A lot of countries are pulling back, but it's further reinforced that they are not only pulling back, they've also have taken all the delivery of a lot of product in the past several years. Now they have to burn down all that inventory. On one hand, they are printing less, on the other hand, they have inventory that's taking them some time, time to consume. We think we probably should be back in equilibrium by the end of this calendar year, and the second half, we should see a beginning of recovery in the anti-counterfeiting demand, which obviously will drive significant operating leverage for our business. What do you think the quarterly baseline in, in, in the counterfeiting business is? I think the base business today, we are seeing running around, $50 million, closer, closer to $50, from the normal, about $55 and kinda higher end, about $60. We said $55 was the base. At the higher end, we get up to $60. Right now, I'd say this is kinda the lowest demand I've seen in a long time. Okay, baseline is around $55 million is the normal- About $0.55, yeah. You should get back to once, we get through this correction in, in that business. As you can imagine, this is pretty much almost everything, with the exception of materials, drops to the bottom line, because it's a pure fixed cost business. At that level, it's what type of operating margin? At 55%? Well, when you got to take combination of the baseline business and the anti-counterfeiting. As I say, when both of them are filing or firing, firing on all cylinders, we get into the mid what, 40s. When both of them are in the worst possible shape, you get into the low 40s. Right. The baseline on the, counterfeiting, excluding the, 3D sensing, is higher, at the higher end of that range, right? So around 40. Yeah, we don't break it out, but I would say when, when, when you're kinda running steady state, you should be in the high 40s. Okay. For the whole business unit. One more question. It, it sounds like the strength in the June quarter came as a result of the seasonal uptake of cable, which is pretty clearly a very seasonal pattern around the summer. They spend, you know, and deploy over the summer, and they tend to pull back into the to the colder weather. As we go into the fourth quarter, I would think that most telcos are under enormous pressure to deliver significantly improved cash flow. I mean, certainly AT&T has promised that they're going to see, you know, deliver much improved cash flow as in the back half. Are we at risk that we're getting a little bit of improvement here over the course of the summer, driven primarily by cable, but at risk of a fourth quarter disappointment, as a result of them pulling back into that, seasonally critical fourth quarter for them, on their cash flow? Well, you know, I, I actually don't believe that. I mean, you're right about the cash flow and what they wanna do, but remember, the 800-pound gorilla in their cash flow is the CapEx that they spend on equipment and construction. If they're gonna do it, that's what they're pulling. Remember, they couldn't do it a year ago because they had six months of NC&R contracts, non-cancelable, non-refundable. They had to go, so they, they initially shut down all the OpEx expenses, and that's what got us hit. Right now, if you think about the, what they spend on network maintenance, it's a pi-pimple on the elephant's behind, relatively speaking, but it's, it giving them significant, you know, operational effectiveness, just by keeping the network running. I think the money pool from which we are drawing, even though they're not, you know, it's not burning hole in their pocket, they are spending the money, not at the same rate as it was a year ago. This is one area that they are looking to do, to spend, to get more out of what they already have installed, rather than adding to the capacity. I think you're right on them buying new equipment and doing new construction. Where I do see them spending money is trying to get more, more bang for the buck they already spent. That's what we benefit primarily from. Okay, that, that makes good sense. I appreciate that, that differentiation. Just, just one last question, if I could. When I look out into, the back half of the year, and, and, the, the potential recovery in, in the first half of next year, the street's sitting at 2.5%, kind of revenue growth, 0%-5%, if you wanna do a band and $0.61. I know you don't want to guide, but do you feel like those are reasonably attainable, or do you think that they're a little challenging, or do you think that they're easily beatable? What can you just give us some tone around it? You know, I mean, it, it really depends on the first half of calendar, next calendar year, right? I mean, we don't have much visibility, but we do know that we think our 11 production part of the business is gonna continue to recover. I mean, we are seeing R&D at SEMI and NEMs kinda getting back. I mean, there is a strong competitive angle to it. I mean, they cannot forever reduce their engineering spend. We do think the anti-counterfeiting business is gonna continue to recover, especially in the second half of the year. You know, I'd say, and we know mil-aero is actually pretty strong as well. The only thing that I, is that, you know, we have to wait and see, is to how aggressive the service providers will do in the second half of the calendar year. If they are conservative, then we are thinking you've got to be roughly flattish. If they decide to start getting back and spending a bit more money, then you could have, then the growth projection could be reasonable. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Thanks, Oleg. Next, we'll go to Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley. Great, thanks. Maybe just wanted to spend a second on the SE business. You know, you guys have had a number of products that kind of can help drive revenue for your customers. Just wondering, you know, in this environment, are they less likely to adopt those, or are you kind of seeing traction with those products that can kind of help with more revenue upside for customers? Then maybe just a second question. You know, obviously, M&A in this space has been a little bit tough in the past, with just kind of more elevated valuation expectations. I would assume with a more challenged customer set right now, you know, that maybe people's expectations are a little bit more reasonable. Does it change how you kind of view the M&A landscape? Thanks. Sure. You know, we're actually feeling pretty good about our SE business these days. You know, it's been a, I'd say, five, six years of restructuring. We've reduced spend significantly, and within the existing R&D, we had to retool the product architecture and more importantly, focus where we are going to invest going forward. The area where we have a very strong product offering today is around the AIOps, which is the, in kinda your automation, native network operation center, automation, the artificial intelligence, helping you with the preventive maintenance and things around that landscape. We are seeing a pretty good traction, we are winning some pretty, again, some very heavy hitters in the market, which gives me confidence that, you know, this is not a one-off type opportunity. So we feel, we, we, we do feel that SE has every opportunity to become a gaining momentum through this year, which is, you know, finally, this is the year it's gonna finally start contributing to the overall. By now, we have pretty much flushed all the declining legacy business, which was roughly around $50 million-$60 million, six, seven years ago. Pretty much all of it has gone away, and we've been, you know, replacing it. From this point on, it's all kind of firing and pulling in the same direction. In that respect, we feel our SE business on both on the enterprise and service providers side, has some very exciting story to tell, and we think that they could achieve pretty good success in the coming years. On the M&A environment, it's quite interesting. I mean, clearly, there's only a handful of big transformational M&A opportunities, and we all know what those are. I mean, I think they're still fairly inactionable. But what we are seeing very interesting is the lack of liquidity, and all of a sudden, a lot of, you know, sizable software, mainly on the software side, companies that are complementary to our SE business. All of a sudden, we've seen the company where-- I just give you one example, that we saw a year ago, and we gave them, you know, a very respectable offer, and they walked away laughing at us. They just got sold for one-fourth of our offer a year ago at liquidation because they couldn't repay the debt they were carrying. There is actually now a lot of very interesting technologies that you can pick up at the bargain basement, stock ins. It's purely becoming a make versus buy, and all of a sudden, you can pick up modules for your software offering below the cost of make. This is what we are seeing right now, and we are obviously, aggressively looking at these opportunities. Perfect. Thanks so much. Sure. Next, we'll go to Ruben Roy with Stifel. Your line is open. Thank you. I just had a couple. Oleg, on the topic of improving conversations, how would you characterize that? Is that sort of broad-based across, you know, your customer base, or is it relegated to, you know, sort of your larger customers? Also, you know, geographically, are you seeing that again, broad-based geographically, or, or is it sort of centered in, in any specific areas? Yeah, I mean, I'd say, you know, customer conversation is actually fairly broad-based. It's not a one-off. I mean, clearly, there's more intense conversations with the companies like Cable. Amazingly, also, the conversations are with the Tier 2 telecom providers. Mainly, many of them are private equity funded, like fiber deployers and things like that. I mean, they were the first ones to kind of pull back, but they also are now coming back and, you know, looking what they're gonna be doing. On the lab and production with the engineering organizations, I think after about two quarters of pulling back, they are back, you know, because they, they, they need to deliver their roadmap and products to their customers, so we're seeing that coming back. I'd say between the engineering CapEx customers and the, I would say, cable and fiber service providers, the talk is much more intensive. The wireless, I think is kinda quiet still. I think they're still digesting what they already got. We do think the wireless is gonna be coming back probably in the second half of the year. Got it. Thank you for that detail. Just a quick follow-up, just a clarification on the lab spend. It sounded like, you, you're starting to, you know, see a little bit of discussion or improvement in maybe even orders from semiconductor companies and some of the equipment companies, but then, you know, we are still lagging behind the field stuff. I, I guess, are you, are you expecting lab to be down again and then, you know, stabilize in, in, in the current quarter, or, or has it already stabilized? No, I think, the bottom quarter for lab was the March quarter, and it had some recovery in June, and I, I expect it to continue to recover throughout the year. Got it. Thank you, Oleg. Sure. That concludes today's question and answer session and today's call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.