Wi-Fi provider Ruckus Wireless Inc. (RKUS) reported record revenue for the fourth quarter of 2012, with its full-year revenue up 79% to $214.7 million. In its first earnings report as a public company, Ruckus said it added nearly 3,000 new end-customers in the fourth quarter, bringing it to a total of more than 21,700.
Despite the positive results, the company followed up with guidance for essentially flat revenue growth of $62-64 million expected in the first quarter and other conservative guidance, and investors took the stock from above $22 per share to around $20 per share in response. Ruckus was trading around $19.43 a share on Wednesday morning.
Revenue for the fourth quarter was up 51% year-over-year, to $62.2 million. While non-GAPP net income was $6.1 million, up from $4.9 million during the same quarter in 2011, GAAP net income was down to $1.9 million from $3.2 million in the prior year’s period.
This week, Ruckus also announced that it is working with Intermec Inc. on new wireless systems for use within distribution centers and manufacturing operations.
The company also said that its ZoneFlex 7982 Smart Wi-Fi access point performed well in an enterprise Wi-Fi stress test performed by Wireless LAN Professionals Inc. The test involved trying to determine how much traffic was needed to disrupt access points from nine enterprise suppliers by running high-definition unicast video streams to dozens of iPads, while also transferring a 600 MB file and performing a 20-second iPerf TCP test to a Macbook Pro over the same access point. WLAN Pros also conducted dual-band testing.
Meanwhile, Netgear Inc. also reported its quarterly and year-end results for the final quarter of 2012. The company’s fourth quarter 2012 net revenue was $310.4 million, up slightly from the $309.2 million Netgear reported during the same period in 2011. Non-GAAP net income of $21.5 million was down almost 19 percent year-over-year.
For the year, Netgear’s net revenue was up 7.7% to $1.27 billion.
“The worldwide macroeconomic environment proved challenging for us during the second half of 2012,” said Patrick Lo, Netgear’s chairman and CEO. He said the company saw reduced spending by service provider and enterprise customers, but that its retail business unit saw the best fourth-quarter sequential growth of the past three years – up 12% sequentially and 5% for the full year.
Netgear said its service provider business unit’s net revenue was down 12% sequentially in the fourth quarter, but up 25% from its 2011 full year figure.
Lo added that Netgear expects that its recent acquisition of Sierra Wireless’ aircard business to drive global growth for its service provider business unit by combining an LTE engineering team with its Wi-Fi engineering team.
“We believe that fixed mobile broadband gateways will be the Internet access device of choice for the estimated four and a half billion people not connected to high speed broadband Internet because of poor wireline telecommunications infrastructure,” Lo said.
The company introduced 32 new products in the fourth quarter, Lo said. Netgear also made two more announcements this week – that it is launching a new LTE voice gateway that offers telephone services, Wi-Fi and firewall security over a built-in LTE modem so that mobile operators can offer a solution that replaced fixed-line services; and that it is collaborating with Global Wireless Technologies, which specializes in relay and small cell technology for 3G and LTE, to improve its mobile broadband offerings for operators.
