Network site solutions company PCTel saw booming revenue for the quarter, with an increase of 34% year-over-year to $26.7 million.
The company has two reporting segments: connected solutions, which includes its antennas and site solutions offerings, and RF solutions, which covers its scanners and network engineering services. The connected solutions segment includes PCTel’s acquisition of TelWorx last year; the company said that acquisition assets accounted for 22% growth of its total growth, with another 12% coming from pre-acquisition products and services. The acquisition also boosted PCTel’s earnings last quarter.
The RF solutions segment revenue was $7.6 million, up 46% year-over-year on established product lines and services.
“Revenue was up significantly in both scanning products and network engineering services,” CFO John Schoen told analysts in a conference call (transcript posted on Seeking Alpha). “The increase in scanner revenue is attributed to carrier spending increasing from a low point in 2012. The network engineering services revenue growth is attributed to the rapid growth of the in-building wireless network expansion.”
However, the company’s overall profits were down from $445,000 in the previous year’s quarter to $187,000.
Marty Singer, PCTel’s CEO, described the quarter as one of “solid progress on all fronts.” He told analysts that he will be visiting China later this year to court operators such as China Mobile, and that the company is already actively promoting its scanning receivers for LTE and TD-LTE test and measurement.
“China Mobile … dwarfs any other operator on the planet. So if we take what our typical sales could be to Verizon in a year, our sales to China Mobile could be 4 to 5x greater than that for our scanning receiver product line,” Singer said.
“Now clearly, we have barriers there,” he warned. “There are local Chinese suppliers, the scanning receivers. There are local Chinese engineering groups that will have a bias towards some of the local providers but still, we believe that we are in the shortlist at every national and regional competition for our scanning receivers.”
