Inseego (INSG) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Source Motley_fool
Logo of jester cap with thought bubble.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Date

Thursday, May 7, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

Call participants

  • Chief Executive Officer — Juho Sarvikas
  • Chief Financial Officer — Steven Gatoff

Need a quote from a Motley Fool analyst? Email pr@fool.com

Takeaways

  • Total revenue -- $34.3 million, an 8% increase year over year, attributed to higher fixed wireless access (FWA) volumes and a stable contribution from software services.
  • Adjusted EBITDA -- $1.8 million, representing 5.1% of revenue and at the higher end of prior guidance.
  • Non-GAAP gross margin -- 48.9%, rising approximately 640 basis points sequentially from Q4 2025 due to a higher mix of software services revenue.
  • Mobile segment revenue -- $16.7 million; the largest dollar contributor in the reported period.
  • FWA segment revenue -- $5.3 million, with a sequential decline from Q4 2025 attributed to customer-specific factors; FWA revenue increased meaningfully year over year.
  • Software services revenue -- $12.3 million, described as a stable, high-margin contributor.
  • Cash balance -- $19 million at quarter-end, above expectations, resulting from a large customer clearing quarter-end accounts payable balances.
  • Debt balance -- Approximately $49 million at quarter-end, $8 million higher than year-end; all $42 million in outstanding Preferred Stock was eliminated in January at a 38% discount.
  • Q2 2026 revenue guidance -- $36.5 million to $43.5 million, with an expected sequential growth of approximately 12%, primarily from FWA growth; includes offset from a lower mobile quarter due to continued MiFi product delays.
  • Q2 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance -- $250,000 to $2 million, projected to be lower sequentially due to increased spending in sales, marketing, and R&D.
  • Full year 2026 revenue target -- $190 million, with expectations for profitability to improve as revenue scales in the second half of the year.
  • Nokia FWA acquisition size -- Approximately $200 million revenue run rate, described as the largest such deal in company history and set to more than double Inseego's existing revenue base.
  • Acquisition structure -- $20 million total consideration: $15 million in Inseego common stock and $5 million in warrants to Nokia; funded with no cash or incremental debt.
  • EBITDA transition support -- Structure will keep the acquired business at EBITDA breakeven for the first year post-close, underwritten by Nokia's quarterly cash payments, capped at $38 million in aggregate.
  • Profit sharing mechanism -- In years two and three after closing, Nokia will participate in positive EBITDA from the acquired business based on revenue performance, with a potential range from 0%-50% of EBITDA.
  • New leadership appointment -- Koroush Saraf joined as Chief Product Officer, bringing over 20 years of experience in networking, cybersecurity, hardware, software, edge infrastructure, and AI.
  • Product launch dynamics -- Two of three new mobile hotspot models launched successfully with Tier-1 carriers; the third has been delayed to late June, affecting Q2 performance.
  • Customer commitments -- Secured a commitment for the next-generation FWA platform with a major customer, plus a low-tier MiFi product with another Tier-1 carrier.
  • Operational investments -- Deliberate increases in sales, marketing, and R&D spending are occurring in the first half to support carrier ramps, portfolio expansion, and readiness for late-year profitability improvements.
  • Nokia strategic partnership -- Acquisition agreement includes technology, AI, 6G, and go-to-market collaboration with ongoing sales incentives for Nokia's global team beyond transaction close.
  • Expanded geographic reach -- Acquisition takes Inseego from a North America-focused provider to expanded markets in Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
  • Gross margin outlook -- Management stated "the margin profile of that business is more of a teens kind of gross margin than it is in the 20s right now, but we expect to be able to drive that in the future once we close."

Summary

Inseego (NASDAQ:INSG) delivered year-over-year revenue growth in Q1 2026 and announced a transformative agreement to acquire Nokia's FWA business, expected to more than double its revenue base post-closing in Q4. The acquisition structure eliminates the need for new debt or upfront cash, provides a year of EBITDA breakeven stability through transition support from Nokia, and introduces an EBITDA profit-sharing mechanism thereafter. Management described the combination as immediately giving Inseego global scale, greatly broadening its product portfolio, customer base, and geographic exposure, and creating ongoing alignment with Nokia via technology and sales partnerships. The quarter featured strong contributions from software services, steady progress in carrier relationships, and deliberate investment in operational capacity, while specific product delays and a major FWA customer disruption weighed on near-term results. The leadership team initiated organizational changes—such as a new Chief Product Officer and engineering search—to address execution and integrate best practices from Nokia. Looking ahead, the company provides Q2 and full-year financial guidance pointing to sequential revenue improvement and margins impacted by planned investments in portfolio expansion and delayed product revenues.

  • Management described customer and partner sentiment toward the Nokia FWA acquisition as "overwhelmingly positive" with global cross-sell and upsell opportunities identified during diligence and subsequent meetings.
  • The company reported eliminating all $42 million in Preferred Stock at a 38% discount.
  • Quarter-end cash exceeded plan due to a one-time receivable clearance from a major customer, signaling working capital effectiveness but not recurring benefit.
  • Large mobile carrier partnership expansion and entry into the value-tier segment are expected to position Inseego for additional market share gains as product launches ramp through the year.
  • The structure of the Nokia transaction includes ongoing transition support, not only providing near-term EBITDA stability but also supply chain and engineering collaboration intended to yield cost and operational synergies over time.
  • Management highlighted that FWA and mobile launches, though delayed in some cases, plus MSO and international customer development, underpin expectation for back-loaded 2026 revenue realization.
  • Software platform "Inseego Subscribe" is identified as a full subscriber life-cycle management tool with Fed/SLED specialization that could see an expanded addressable market following the Nokia deal.

Industry glossary

  • FWA (Fixed Wireless Access): Wireless high-speed internet delivered over cellular networks, serving as an alternative to wired broadband in residential, enterprise, or industrial settings.
  • MSO (Multiple System Operator): A cable industry term for companies operating multiple cable television systems, often also delivering broadband and related services.
  • MiFi: Inseego’s brand of portable wireless hotspot devices that provide internet connectivity using cellular networks.
  • Fed/SLED: Refers to U.S. Federal, State, and Local Government plus Education vertical market segments.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Juho Sarvikas: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. This is a very exciting chapter for Inseego and an important step in the company's transformation to diversify revenue and at scale. Over the past year, we have been executing a strategy focused on increasing stockholder value by strengthening the foundation of the company, expanding our product portfolio and customer base, broadening our routes to market and solidifying our leading position as the partner of choice across mobile and enterprise FWA. Last week, we accelerated that strategy in a very significant way with the announcement of a truly transformational acquisition for Inseego.

It is the largest revenue deal in the company's history, and it's one that we structured very thoughtfully to meaningfully derisk the profile of the transaction. We view it as a major milestone and important inflection point for the company for three reasons: First, it will more than double the revenues as of the company and take us from a North America-centric player to be the new global leader in wireless broadband in one decisive move as our end markets expand from North America to Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Second, it gives us one of the broadest portfolios in the industry across consumer and business markets, including FWA, mobile routers and IoT gateways that we can use to address the expanded TAM. And third, it establishes a unique and strategic partnership with Nokia across go-to-market, AI, 6G and the future of the wireless edge. Before I discuss the acquisition in more detail, I want to first cover our Q1 2026 results and provide color on our operational progress and some challenges in the quarter that we're managing through. Q1 revenue grew 8% year-over-year to $34.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.8 million, and both revenue and adjusted EBITDA were within our guidance. We also delivered healthy gross margins at 48.9%.

As we said on our Q4 call in February, 2026 is a year of investment in carrier ramps, product launches and portfolio expansion in the first half, followed by benefits of greater scale, improving operating leverage and stronger profitability as the year progresses. Q1 played out largely as we expected and in line with what we discussed on our Q4 call. One challenge in Q1 was in FWA. Our large FWA customer overhauled its executive team and changed its approach to enterprise go-to-market, which created disruption for us in the quarter. We are working with them to realign the go-to-market and expect to see progress.

Meanwhile, we've secured a commitment for our next-generation FWA platform with that same customer, reinforcing both the strength of that relationship and our position at the leading edge of sever technology. In addition, our recently added Tier-1 customer is ramping very well in FWA. This goes to show the importance of executing on our strategy of diversifying our revenue base. Mobile delivered $16.7 million of revenue. On last quarter's call, we said we had engineering delays in our new mobile hotspot product family, which consists of a model for each of our Tier-1 carriers that would impact Q1.

While we have successfully launched two out of three models, the delay in the third is persisting into Q2, we anticipate to launch in late June. I'm happy to share with you that we've executed on our strategy to broaden the mobile portfolio across multiple value tiers and secured a carrier commitment for a new low-tier MiFi product, which is an important step in expanding the portfolio and positioning the category for broader contribution over time. I've made important changes to address the execution issues I mentioned. I've brought in a new Chief Product Officer and launched a search for Head of Engineering.

It's important to note that as part of the Nokia FWA acquisition, I will be integrating people and best practices from Nokia, an industry leader in engineering technology, which will help us scale both our existing business and the newly acquired business. We recently welcomed Koroush Saraf as our new Chief Product Officer. Koroush brings more than 20 years of experience across networking, cybersecurity, hardware, software and edge infrastructure with expertise in AI, SD-WAN, cloud security and 5G. He held product leadership roles at ZPE Systems, Accredo, Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet, where he helped bring products to market across connectivity, networking and security.

Koroush understands how to build and scale product platforms across hardware and software, and his background is closely aligned with our strategic priorities as we continue expanding the portfolio. So, in summary, Q1 played out as we expected. As we move into Q2, we continue to build our FWA business. And in mobile, while we have launched a new product generation with two out of our three Tier-1 carriers, the additional delay with the third one will impact our Q2 outlook. As it won't launch until late June, it therefore, won't benefit most of the quarter. Moving to the transformational announcement we made last week, the acquisition of Nokia's FWA business.

What makes this transaction compelling is what it means for Inseego strategically for our market position, our global reach, our technology roadmap and our ability to lead the wireless broadband edge as AI, 5G evolution and eventually 6G expand the opportunity in front of us. The simplest way to think about this transaction is that it's transformative for Inseego. We are acquiring Nokia's approximately $200 million revenue run rate FWA business. That more than doubles our revenue base, gives us immediate global scale in revenue and reach and positions Inseego as one of the leading global players in FWA with what we believe is the broadest platform in the industry across mobile, fixed, enterprise and consumer connectivity.

It also establishes a partnership with Nokia across technology, go-to-market collaboration and ownership alignment. From a scale, reach, financial and technology standpoint of view, this acquisition transforms Inseego and sets us on a greatly accelerated growth trajectory. For Inseego, the strategic logic is very clear. This acquisition materially advances our product roadmap and gives us immediate global presence. It takes what has been a U.S.-centric business and makes Inseego instantly global. It also gives us a strong set of global Tier-1 customers and creates real opportunity to take Inseego products into Nokia's customer base and Nokia FWA products into Inseego's customer base.

It gives us a different level of scale from day one and positions us to compete across a much broader set of customer segments, geographies and use cases. This gives us a much stronger position in FWA market, which is growing rapidly and becoming more important globally. The drivers are clear. Operators are increasingly using FWA to monetize 5G, expand broadband access and serve a broader range of consumer and enterprise use cases. At the same time, AI-driven workloads are increasing uplink demand, lowering latency tolerance and pushing more intelligence to the edge, while 5G evolution, millimeter wave and over time, 6G continue to expand what wireless broadband networks can support.

We believe this transaction gives us exactly the right platform to capitalize on those key trends. This is also a strong fit for both companies. Nokia is sharpening its focus on AI infrastructure and network leadership. Inseego is building a leadership position at the wireless broadband edge. Bringing these two together creates a very compelling combination and a strong fit strategically for both sides. On a personal level, this transaction means a great deal to me as well. I spent nearly eight years at Nokia, so I know the teams, the products, the customers and the quality in which they operate the business.

I also know the depth of technology and the relevance of this business in the broader wireless broadband ecosystem. This is a business we understand, a market we deeply believe in and an opportunity we are generally excited to bring into Inseego. I also want to thank Nokia President and CEO, Justin Hotard, and his team for the partnership and the work they've done to get us to this point. We appreciate the relationship and are excited about what we will build together going forward. It has been one week since we announced the deal. And while there is obviously a lot of work ahead of us, the response we've seen from partners and customers has been overwhelmingly positive.

As I mentioned earlier, an important part of this acquisition for me is the ability to add strong Nokia expertise to our company. I'm driving to one global engineering team, one product team and one integrated supply chain. Signing the deal only got us to the starting line. I'm laser-focused on making sure we execute along the way, starting with the overall integration of the business. We are approaching integration the right way with a clear focus on customer continuity, employee integration and building the right culture. We have a dedicated and experienced team leading this effort. Importantly, the business and financial attractiveness of this deal is well aligned. In this regard, this is not a bolt-on.

It's about bringing two complementary organizations together with a clear set of opportunities for scale, efficiency and cost synergies over time. The transaction structure is designed to give us the flexibility to integrate thoughtfully, continue investing in the roadmap and optimize the business as we execute. Steven will walk through the structure in more detail. But from my perspective, that operating framework is an important part of what makes this transaction so compelling. At the same time, we remain fully focused on the existing business. We are driving that business forward while preparing to bring these two organizations together as one fully aligned team, serving a much larger global opportunity across mobile, enterprise and consumer wireless broadband.

With that, let me turn the call over to Steven to discuss the Q1 financials, Q2 outlook and the Nokia acquisition structure and economics in more detail.

Steven Gatoff: Thank you, Juho. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'd like to cover three topics today, as Juho said. First, I'll take you through our Q1 2026 financial results. Second, I'll share some color on the financial profile of the business and provide our guidance for Q2 2026. And third, as Jo mentioned, I'll provide more details on the FWA acquisition structure and economics. To be clear, though, the discussion of our financial results for Q1 2026 and our outlook and guidance for Q2 and the full year 2026 are for Inseego only and do not include any of the Nokia FWA business.

The acquisition is anticipated to close in Q4 2026, and we will look to provide the relevant financial information in that time frame. As we always do, we'll wrap up today by opening the call to your questions. Starting with our financial results. Q1 played out largely as expected, as Juho mentioned, and reflected the timing and transition dynamics that we discussed on the last call. We delivered year-over-year revenue growth, healthy gross margins and adjusted EBITDA within our guided range. And we did this while we continue to invest in the product, go-to-market and operating capabilities needed to support the larger organic growth opportunities ahead.

On the top line, total revenue for Q1 was $34.3 million, up 8% year-over-year and driven by higher FWA volumes relative to the prior year period, along with a consistent contribution from our software services offerings. As expected, mobile was the larger dollar revenue contributor in the quarter at $16.7 million. FWA revenue was $5.3 million for the quarter. And while that was a sequential decline from Q4 2025 that reflected the timing and customer-specific dynamics that we highlighted on the last call, FWA revenue was up meaningfully year-over-year, supported by higher carrier volumes and a broader customer footprint. Software services revenue was $12.3 million, as mentioned, continuing to provide a stable high-margin contribution to results. Moving down the P&L.

Non-GAAP gross margin in Q1 was 48.9%, up about 640 basis points sequentially, primarily as a result of a higher proportion of software services revenue. Non-GAAP operating expenses for Q1 were essentially flat to Q4 2025 of $16.9 million. As we discussed previously, this reflects the planned investment in sales and marketing and R&D in the quarter. These are deliberate investments tied to carrier ramps, portfolio expansion and broader go-to-market readiness for the second half of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA in Q1 2026 was $1.8 million or 5.1% of revenue, which was at the higher end of our guidance.

That result reflects what we said on the last call, lower profitability in the first part of the year driven by front-end investment while preserving the setup for stronger scale and profitability in the second half of the year. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended Q1 with a higher-than-anticipated cash balance of $19 million from a large customer clearing their quarter end AP balances. We drove healthy working capital through the quarter and finished Q1 with a manageable debt balance of approximately $49 million. That is $8 million higher than the year-end balance on our successful elimination of all of the $42 million in outstanding Preferred Stock that we executed in January at a meaningful 38% discount.

Let's now turn to Q2 2026 guidance. We continue to view 2026 as a growth year with front-loaded investment in the first half designed to position us for greater scale, stronger operating leverage and improved profitability in the second half of the year. That basic first half, second half dynamic remains unchanged and is playing out as communicated. As we said on the Q4 2025 call in February, framing Q1, the first half of the year reflects several dynamics. First, the second half of 2025 benefited from a strong FWA ramp with a Tier-1 customer and elevated mobile volumes tied to carrier promotions and ordering cadence.

Second, we are in the early stages of launching several new FWA programs with our Tier-1 carrier customers, and those revenue ramps build over time rather than all at once. And third, our refreshed MiFi portfolio is setting up for contribution in late Q2 and beyond as we work through the delays that Juho talked to. Against that backdrop, we remain positive on the outlook for both mobile and FWA in 2026 as we continue expanding our business with our Tier-1 carrier customers and broadening our routes to market.

Looking at Q2 2026, we expect revenue to increase about 12% sequentially from Q1, driven by improved contribution from growth in FWA among both our carrier and channel customers, offset somewhat by a lower mobile quarter on MiFi, as Juho discussed. We expect software services revenue to remain consistent at approximately $12 million. From a profitability standpoint, we expect Q2 2026 adjusted EBITDA to be lower sequentially with the anticipated increased spend in sales and marketing and R&D before that spend lowers again and revenue ramps to drive higher profitability levels in the second half of 2026 as we highlighted. Pulling this all together, we're providing the following guidance for Q2 2026.

Total revenue in a range of $36.5 million to $43.5 million and adjusted EBITDA in a range of $250,000 to $2 million. We see a higher range to the upside on revenue as we now have multiple new product launches and carrier initiatives in market, a new dynamic for Inseego and the specific timing of which can land on either side of quarter end. Stepping back to the full year 2026, we continue to expect organic growth and see a path to deliver $190 million of revenue with the year building sequentially and profitability improving meaningfully in the back half as revenue scales. With that, let's turn now to the FWA acquisition.

As we've said, we held the conference call last week on April 30 to walk through the transaction. So, I'll keep the focus today on the key structural and financial points. We encourage anyone who hasn't already to listen to the webcast and download the acquisition presentation that's on the Investor Relations section of our website at inseego.com. Overall, this is an asset purchase structure with an aggregate consideration of $20 million that consists of $15 million in Inseego common stock and $5 million in warrants to be issued to Nokia.

We're very bullish on the deliberate transaction structure that we put together that meaningfully derisks the addition, of international scale and value creation for the company in a disciplined way and that aligns both parties around stockholder value creation. We would offer there are three aspects of the acquisition that we'd like to highlight. First, the way we structure the transaction preserves balance sheet flexibility. We are materially increasing the scale of the business without using cash or incurring any debt and that matters. Second, the transaction structure creates real alignment between Inseego and Nokia. Nokia is not simply divesting an asset and moving on.

They're becoming a shareholder of Inseego and have aligned incentives around execution and long-term stockholder value creation. And third, the transition support framework aspect of the transaction is important. We designed the structure to maintain the acquired FWA business at EBITDA breakeven for the first year following the close. This will be achieved through quarterly cash payments from Nokia that are equal to the negative EBITDA of the acquired business at first year. That support gives us stability during the transition while preserving upside to realize the broader cost savings and operating synergy opportunities over time.

As we discussed, the EBITDA make whole is capped at $38 million in aggregate, which we see as wholly adequate for that first year of operations. There is also a longer-term alignment mechanism through profit sharing in years two and three following the close, where Nokia will be able to participate in positive EBITDA generated by the acquired business that is correlated with its performance. In this regard, we see an opportunity to leverage greater supply chain scale and purchasing power and to realize engineering efficiencies through product design and development model benefits in order to drive profitability over time.

We believe the structure creates an attractive and disciplined framework for Inseego shareholders and the scale is compelling with the acquired FW business, essentially doubling the size of Inseego and bringing approximately $200 million of revenue on a run rate basis from their Q1 2026 results. When you combine that scale with the transition support, the equity alignment and the revenue and cost synergy opportunities, we believe the way we structure this acquisition meaningfully derisks the transaction financially, complementing the strategically compelling nature of the opportunity.

As noted earlier on the announcement call, we currently expect the acquisition to close in Q4 2026, subject to customary closing conditions, and we look forward to providing more financial details on the business as we move to the closing. With that, we appreciate your time and support and are glad to open the call for questions. Operator?

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And the first question will come from Tyler Burmeister with Lake Street Capital Markets.

Tyler Burmeister: Steven, maybe first on the Nokia acquisition you guys announced last week. I'm wondering if you're able to at this point or if it's something we have to wait closer to closing, to provide a little more detail on exactly what that year two, year three profit sharing looks like, what some of the metrics are that you would hit for Nokia to participate in that?

Steven Gatoff: Yes. We'll do both of those. We will provide more details in our filings, and we're happy to share that the basic structure of the profit share is based on the revenue performance of the acquired business. And the way it works is that Nokia will be able to participate somewhere between 0% and 50% of the EBITDA, positive EBITDA that's generated from the business based on where the revenue of that business comes in.

Tyler Burmeister: Great. Maybe pivoting to the core Inseego business here in the quarter. Gross margins, maybe as we look through the year, obviously, there's going to be some mix headwind as your product revenue ramps in Q2 and the second half of the year. Wondering if you could just maybe give some thoughts on gross margins for the remainder of this year.

Steven Gatoff: Yes. We'll tag team on that as usual. And I think you just summarized it really well. That is exactly what's going on that in the reported quarter in Q1, the margin was quite high, mostly on mix, mostly on a higher proportion of software because of the lower print on mobile basically and certainly on FWA, which is generally a higher-margin business. And then as we roll out though, more products, like I mentioned earlier, is this is really the first period in the company's history where we have multiple product launches across multiple carriers.

And so, the good news is we're looking to grow revenue and compete well, and that does bring some gross margin pressure in so far as rate. So that is kind of the dynamic that you summarized quite well.

Juho Sarvikas: Yes. I think Steven also mentioned in his prepared remarks that it's a new dynamic for the company. So if you look at our revenue engines that we have now compared to a year ago when there were really three products across two carriers. Now we're ramping up three mobile products across all three carriers. These mobile products are positioned now to capture a much larger share of the market at a lower price point with some pressure on the gross margin that you'll see reflected. Meanwhile, on FWA, we're very happy to see the ramp of our new Tier-1 carrier partner while we continue to work with the existing large partner to realign on the go-to-market side.

And then the big element in addition to that would be our targeted expansion to the MSO. So you get from those three revenue drivers to over six. And then, of course, with channel, we're now in the middle of the FX4200, our new product introduction to the market, and I expect to see a rebound effect there in Q2 and ongoing growth in addition to mobile, which has always been a strong driver in channel for us.

Tyler Burmeister: I appreciate all that color. Maybe last one, if I can sneak one more in. I was wondering on your software business, The Inseego Subscribe, which is the majority of that business with one carrier customer today, I was wondering how you might think about the opportunity to expand that with Nokia's international carrier customer base post the close? Do you think there could be a more or less likely opportunity for inroads with some of those customers there?

Juho Sarvikas: Yes. So absolutely, the global footprint opens up more market opportunity for Subscribe as well. Look, the big thing for me with Subscribe as we've done heavy investment on the platform over the past year plus. And on the back of that, expand our customer engagement with the immediate priority being the other large Tier-1 carriers here in the U.S. I'm extremely, extremely encouraged by how well the solution has been received. And again, as a recap, what Subscribe really is, is a full subscriber life cycle management business support solution, and it specializes in the most difficult part of the market, which would be our Fed/SLED segment.

And that specialty is something where we see the differentiation and the value of the platform continue to deliver. In addition, under Steven's leadership, we have hired two new senior leaders for the business, Head of Engineering and Head of Product. And I'm very happy with the traction that these two new leaders have been driving to the platform.

Operator: The next question will come from Lance Vitanza with TD Cowen.

Lance Vitanza: Two questions, I guess. The first is on the Nokia deal, which looks like it's a lot of potential upside there. How should we think about the gross margin potential once you sort of get that business integrated? How should we, is that 10% gross margin? Is it 20% gross margin business? Just trying to think about what this thing could actually look like in a couple of years' time.

Steven Gatoff: Yes. So let's tag team, of course. It's a good question, and we're working that through. And I think your good question has two aspects to it. Like what is it at closing and then what is it over time? And in our view, those are reasonably different, not amazingly. But to your point, a good portion of the customer base right now is a high velocity consumer-based, residential-based model. The product is pretty diverse. It can go to business as well.

But the margin profile of that business is more of a teens kind of gross margin than it is in the 20s right now, but we expect to be able to drive that in the future once we close.

Juho Sarvikas: There's not really a single gross margin percentage that will exist in nature in that business. If you look at the, like Steven was saying, the book of business that we're acquiring, you have anything from a very advanced millimeter wave deployment in Australia with a significantly higher gross margin contract to emerging markets and everything in between.

The other things that I'm very excited about and in all of the discussions with our existing customer base that has become apparent is that now on the back of this asset and with Inseego becoming #1 in wireless broadband globally, we're viewed as a great candidate to take that asset here in the U.S. to residential deployments with our existing large Tier-1 carriers. So there's significant growth opportunity for us, both cross-selling our existing Inseego broadline to global markets, but then also taking this new Nokia FWA asset and competing here in residential or consumer domestically.

Lance Vitanza: And just to sort of follow up on that, like the go-to-market and the distribution capabilities that Nokia can sort of bring to bear here, is there a way to sort of get that started before the closing or at least to sort of get it into position so that when the deal closes, you can kind of hit the ground running day one? Or how should we think about the ramp in terms of their ability to kind of add value from a distribution standpoint?

Juho Sarvikas: That's an excellent question. One of the key things that we've discussed with Justin Hotard from the beginning was to align on the market opportunity. As a part of that, the notion of this strategic go-to-market collaboration continuing with Nokia even beyond we close the transaction. So we will train. We will have a joint account management, pipeline management process. We will incentivize the Nokia global sales team to continue to hunt for us. So on the go-to-market side, that is a very valuable asset for us. It's also good to note that here in the U.S., we already have the sales structure in place to capitalize on the opportunity.

Lance Vitanza: And then maybe just one switching gears for a second, just on the regulatory kind of Washington policy. And I've seen some headlines over the past couple of months, but honestly, I haven't been following it as closely as I could or probably should. But are you getting any sort of a tailwind in terms of what the FCC has been sort of doing in terms of thinking about what can or cannot go into the supply chain these days?

Juho Sarvikas: Yes. So, the FCC ruling is on residential routers where the primary intended use case is for residential deployment. Our solutions for the FWA and a hotspot for that matter, are intended for, primarily for enterprise use. They have manageability, security, all of that enterprise feature set. Like you know, our mobile products also cross-sell into the consumer segment. So as the situation progresses, I do see this as a potential upside driver for us given that we will be able to cater for both segments with a product that, again, primarily intended for enterprise use as opposed to residential.

The other thing I would note here is that the criteria here is produced in U.S. and produced means designed, developed and manufactured. We are unique in that we design and develop here in the U.S. And then when it comes to manufacturing, we have optionality for that as well. So I do believe that our unique position as an American company with design development here in San Diego gives us a great opportunity to capitalize on what's next on that front.

Operator: The next question will come from Scott Searle with ROTH Capital.

Scott Searle: I got on the call a little bit late, so I apologize. I'm going to stay away from supply chain issues because I'm sure they've got addressed, and I can take that offline. But Juho, maybe looking at the second half of this year, we kind of back some revenue more into the second half. So it's a really back-end loaded year. I'm wondering if you could kind of give us what's your level of confidence in terms of the number of operators and/or products and programs that you expect to be launching up? Do you feel pretty comfortable about how the operator cadence of launches is going to perform in the mid to second half of this year?

Juho Sarvikas: Scott, thanks for joining us. Really appreciate your time. To your point, if you look at the revenue engines that we have going into the second half, we're in a really unique position with those three new hotspots launching and ramping by the end of the first half, in addition, on the call today, we announced that we have secured a new value tier win in a hotspot with a large Tier-1 carrier. So there's more work to be done, more business to be expanded, but the mobile portfolio going into the second half is in excellent shape despite some of the time delays that we've experienced on the first half that's reflected in the Q1 performance and Q2 guide.

Meanwhile, on FWA, very, very encouraged by the performance and the partnership with our new large Tier-1 FWA customer, while we continue to realign the go-to-market and sales strategy with our existing large ones. So those are huge for us. In addition, I see great opportunity in the MSO space. We've done a lot of work both on product and cloud side. to become the perfect solution and ideal partner for the large MSOs when it comes to failover day one and other use cases. So I view all of that as very encouraging.

And as we have all of these expiring in the second half, we see visibility to that $190 million that we set as a target for the year.

Scott Searle: Very helpful. And Juho, maybe just to follow up on that. MSO customers, is that likely in the second half of this year? And maybe I wonder if you could just comment on the competitive landscape. There are a lot of dynamics going on out there, obviously related to FCC regulation and security issues. But the breadth of the product portfolio that you now have and as you start to move from the high tier into the mid-tier and low tier, are competitors starting to dwindle and go away and just kind of opening up share gains for you within the existing operator base?

Juho Sarvikas: Thanks. I'll take those one by one. On the MSO engagement pipeline, very strong. The job left to do now is the final conversion. But again, we have good readiness pipeline and visibility into that opportunity space. The SEC ruling, which was, at this point, specific to residential routers in the following Q&A was also identified to cover hotspots as a category. So there's a couple of things that we have going for our favor. First of all, intended primary use case is the enterprise. We have manageability and security and all of those features that cover.

And secondly, if you look at the degree to which you produce in design, develop and manufacture in the U.S., we're in a unique position, as a company to do all of that here in the U.S. So whatever happens there next and how that situation develops, I would expect will always be favorable for us as carriers transition their portfolios and new products go into SEC filings. If you look at the volume opportunities in the marketplace, we've done a great job in consolidating the MiFi mobile market, already now with that mid-tier portfolio that were mid-high tier portfolio that we're in the middle of launching across all three carriers.

Like you know, we've positioned now for higher volume capture where we used to be significantly higher priced than bulk of the market. Now we can drive volume share gains there, which in itself is great. And I do believe that this value tier win that we now have secured in mobile further takes oxygen out from the marketplace in our favor. So we're committed in driving increasing gains in that segment.

Scott Searle: Got you. Very helpful. And if I could, just 2 quick ones on Nokia. I imagine you've probably had some inbounds and engagements with customers on both sides of the acquisition. I'm wondering what the operator response is now with you guys taking over with there being a long-term roadmap and direction for the company in terms of solidifying those existing relationships and then the cross-sell opportunities for you to bring in higher-end mobile hotspots and otherwise into that carrier customer base.

And on the gross margin front, I know it's early, but I'm kind of wondering if you've been able to get a quick peek at what's in the box and the BOM breakdown and have a roadmap to be able to enhance the gross margin profile once you guys get closer to close date and integration.

Juho Sarvikas: Thanks, Scott. We've, as a part of the due diligence process, met with the top customers, top five, think about like that. Since then, we've had meetings with the global, our new global customers across existing ones and the ones that are targeted for further expansion with the Nokia FWA business. And the feedback has been single-handedly positive. We're a trusted known technology leader in the landscape. While we've been operating exclusively, almost exclusively in North America, so far, the reputation, commitment and dedicated focus in this mobile or wireless broadband space is something that's very much acknowledged.

Also the strategic partnership that will carry forward with Nokia is something that's a big confidence builder, of course. for our customer base. But I feel like we're in a great position to continue to be and quite frankly, expand the customer footprint for the business that we're acquiring as a trusted partner of choice. The other thing that I've been very, very encouraged with is that in these discussions, of course, we've also socialized our Inseego portfolio, be that our enterprise FWA or mobile, and we've already uncovered cooperation opportunities with these new international customers where they have a business need that we can feed.

And if you translate that then into the cloud on the ARR side, I think it's a great value proposition to have your, now your entire fleet, whether it's residential, enterprise or mobile managed by a single platform. So all of that feels very good. In the meanwhile, as we've engaged with our existing large customer base, the Tier-1 MSO community and beyond here in North America, the fact that we're becoming overnight the largest global wireless broadband provider gives us the scale and the capability to compete also very aggressively here in residential and other opportunities.

So everything that we've seen in the discussions that we've had makes me believe that we have, we're in a great position to be the new home for the business, grow it and really take it to a place where we have one team, one technology and product platform that we now take this expanded global set of customers across enterprise, consumer, mobile and fixed.

Steven Gatoff: And then, Scott, to your good question on gross margin. As we said a little bit earlier, it's interesting, the margin right now overall in a small number of customers, but large players. It doesn't really exist in nature in that it's in the kind of mid-teens, if you will. But that exists from a very, very large single customer that is the definition of a high-velocity model where you have tremendous market share and tremendous volumes in the millions of units. And so the technology and the engineering quality that Nokia has executed in their business is so compelling, they have been able to add additional customers at much higher margins with two handles on in the 20s.

And so as we see that trajectory of the ability to build off of a foundation of a very strong, high-velocity model that has very efficient supply chain, very efficient operations and then go add higher-margin business to that, that becomes a really compelling story for us, and it's kind of what we've been able to do domestically, organically and that we look to do there on a global basis.

Juho Sarvikas: I think the big thing for me here is that if you look at the product portfolio and the market opportunity, they're completely complementary. Meanwhile, on the engineering and product side, you have a few companies that are now making their own connectivity modules, own software platforms, their own device roadmaps. And now we have the ability to create one platform on all levels and also drive significant synergies even on the device roadmap side and then have one team execute behind that. That's one of the key things here, which we believe will make us very successful with the acquisition.

Operator: This will conclude our question-and-answer session as well as conference call. Thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Should you buy stock in Inseego right now?

Before you buy stock in Inseego, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Inseego wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $460,826!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,345,285!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 983% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 207% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of May 12, 2026.

This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. Parts of this article were created using Large Language Models (LLMs) based on The Motley Fool's insights and investing approach. It has been reviewed by our AI quality control systems. Since LLMs cannot (currently) own stocks, it has no positions in any of the stocks mentioned. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability.

The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Disclaimer: For information purposes only. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
goTop
quote