Wireless infrastructure provider Westell Technologiessaid its quarterly revenues were negatively impacted by lower sales in the in-building wireless (IBW) segment.
In fiscal Q4, ended March 31, the company recorded revenues of $9.7 million, down compared to $10.7 million in the year-ago quarter.
“4Q19 revenue was largely affected by the performance of our IBW segment. While sales of commercial repeaters and DAS conditioners decreased as expected, delays in expanding our product portfolio for a larger addressable public safety market further contributed to the IBW decline. Seasonally lower sales of remote units affected ISM revenue after a strong performance in 3Q19. CNS revenue increased sequentially, led by power distribution and network connectivity products, and growing traction for our new suite of fiber access solutions,” said Stephen John, Westell’s president and CEO.
“Moving forward, our IBW business remains committed to the public safety market and the development of our OnGo small cell for private LTE networks. For our CNS and ISM businesses, we are focused on densification initiatives for 5G and IoT where our fiber access and remote monitoring solutions address the critical requirements of more capacity, deployment simplification, and intelligence at the edge of communication networks,” added John.
The company also said that lower sales in the IBW segment were partly offset by increased sales of existing public safety repeaters and passive RF system components. IBW’s gross margin decrease was primarily due to higher excess and obsolete inventory costs.
In the IBW segment, Westell recorded revenues of $2.47 million, down compared to $3.16 million in fiscal Q4 2018.
“Our public safety offering, single channel 1/2 watt and 2 watt repeaters for 700 MHz, 800 MHz frequency ranges limits us to a small sub-section of the market. The news with the products that we are continuing to work through with our partner include additional capacities, frequency ranges, features and channelization that will enable us to significantly expand our addressable public safety market. We are working through the issues causing the delays and due to the pent-up demand expect to have product to ship to customers in the June quarter,” John said in a conference call with investors.
