Future outlook and investment

Products PMP
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To start, this is not a troll topic. I have been watching the cambium stock price plummet since last year and the change of CEO with growing concern.

I am hoping that someone from Cambium can help instill a little confidence with the consumers on this. Since January the stock has dropped nearly 85%. Watching that performance, I am having a hard time justifying the expense to upgrade to the 450v or Evo line with such a sharp decline over the last 12 months. Not to mention the pressure the wireless industry is facing as a whole from BEAD and other challenges, but wireless manufacturers are thriving (Starts with a U) while this company seems to be on the decline from a financial standpoint.

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We have a fairly large deployment of 450m and 450i’s. The future for them looks bleak if some of the larger funding in our area goes through.

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Yeah, it’s been tough for everyone in the fixed wireless space. It seems like many operators are now transitioning to fiber in order to stay competitive and possibly tap gov’t funding.

We’ve done a few things to help improve fixed wireless customer retention and help increase new sales. For existing clients we’ve increased service tiers to a minimum of 25/5 at no additional cost, along with unlocking bandwidth overnight between midnight and 8am. We also strive for customer service excellence and we don’t nickel and dime for things like service moves, restarts, maintenance visits, and even light consulting for stuff like hooking up printers, etc. We also are generous with service credits if something goes wrong… often time issuing a week or even a month credit even before the client complains.

We’ve also invested a LOT into the network in terms of shaping thanks to Cambium QoE, redundancy, battery backups, generators, multiple licensed or fiber paths at every large site… all of this designed so there are no bottlenecks and greater uptime (then our competitors) during power outages.

From a sales standpoint I’ve empowered our agents allowing them incredible flexibility when playing lets make a deal with a prospective customer. Are you an educator? Are you military? Are you a non-profit? Are you a on a fixed budget? Are you elderly? Are you… insert situation here? Well, we can offer you 10% off or a free wifi router, or the next tier up for cost of the previous tier for a year. We have a mature network and we recycle radios and we’ve now transitioned to the mindset where getting $25-30mo is better then $0mo. We’re now much more comfortable with a longer ROI.

On Cambium’s side I think e4k has really helped us with our goals to provide 100+mbps service tiers at an affordable price. On the PMP450 side, we’re still waiting on the deep vc queue optimizations which should theoretically allow us 100+mbps service tiers… so we’ve really been pushing out e4k to upgrade our network in the mean time.

We’re very close to a point where we’re cheaper, faster, more reliable and have better support then StarLink and we’ve seen the number of clients leaving for SL plummet to next to none.

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I dealt with much of that at my last job and it sounds like your right on with the customer facing side. At my new-ish job (17 years at the old place, 1.5 at the current), were wholesale only. So we have providers on network that handle all of that customer facing side. We just maintain the infrastructure.

The landscape with funding out here could really tank wireless for us. The funding areas essentially cover our wireless coverage from a mixture of 450m and 450i’s. So if those areas are funded, 4-5 years from now the customer base has a strong chance to be dwindling.

The main reason for my question though… Watching the stock drop so fast and continue to hit record lows, how can anyone plan to invest large amounts into expensive AP’s? If the stock is a representation of company health, what happens if the downward spiral continues? With the new products announced and many features appearing to be on the roadmap after initial release, will the teams in charge of development still be around if there’s no money?

Building your network, backups and overall hardware is super important. But betting on a limping horse seems too risky for my blood.

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“We’re very close to a point where we’re cheaper, faster, more reliable and have better support then StarLink and we’ve seen the number of clients leaving for SL plummet to next to none.”

Cheaper/Better than Starlink is definitely an achievable goal. But going by some of the funding rules, that won’t matter. If you’re area is completely covered with your good and reliable e4k gear, someone could still get funding to run fiber and destroy your customer base. Or even get customers free Starlink setups to start.

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Even if the stock is delisted, the company will go on. I remember years ago investing in Airspan thinking that WiMAX was going to be the next big thing. WiMAX died, and Airspan was eventually delisted for going under a buck… BUT they’re still around today. Cambium is much much bigger then Airspan, so I’m confident that they’ll still be around.

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I failed to mention that we bought a bunch of 3GHz PAL licenses and most of our network is using it. The last piece in the puzzle that we really need is for PMP450 to reliably support over 100mbps. As soon as that happens, we’ll feel a bit more secure in not being overbuilt. We’re also kind of in a unique area where there’s both incumbent cable, DSL that have a very large foot print and have already claimed that every house hold in our service area is coverable by them up to 1gbps. So no one has overbuilt in any of our coverage areas with gov’t subsidized fiber… at least not yet.

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No PAL licenses for us, and 3.65 was historically a no go due to proximity to an earth station.

The BEAD funding in our area can be best described as “Take our wireless customer base, map them, now take that area and make them all BEAD targets” lol

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I would personally like to see Cambium address this elephant in the room. We are a Cambium shop, but are shopping around, tough economy in general dictates that, then the government handouts building monopolies around us factors in heavily. If we reinvest into a cambium product for a next gen, we have to know Cambium will be Cambium in 3 years, and when it looks like its about to be chopped up and sold for IP parts, thats very concerning. Or loyalty can go only so far when it becomes a matter of decision making dollars and sense.
Thus far Cambium has been consumer silent on this, and silence speaks louder than words.
The way WISPA treated them at the last show was beyond appaling, but it shows WISPA appears to be actively promoting their competition, that wont help the bottom line one bit, so its time Cambium put some words in our ears.

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100% this ^^^^^^^^

It’s not like were seeing an overall tech slump, Ciena, Ubiquiti, Cisco and many other tech stocks are doing great. I’d really like to hear an update on this. We’re a Cambium shop for wireless, and overall about an 70/30 split Wireless to Fiber currently.

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Just to follow up on that, There seems to be no slowdown to this spiral.

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Can you elaborate on how they were treated at the show? I wasn’t able to attend this year.

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2024 has been a challenging year for the industry due to increased pressure from LEO, fiber, Fixed 5G, high borrowing costs, and significant destocking of materials in the channel. As you well appreciate, the industry is also in a state of change. Higher data rates and quality of service are required to compete, yet end consumers are unwilling to pay more for their service. These forces together demand that businesses change, and so must/is Cambium.

The cornerstone of the WISP market for many years, Cambium’s 450 series product is evolving to meet those needs – providing higher data rates for less money. While this evolution might have started earlier, the need to protect past investments and migrate gracefully to a better future is the way that good companies treat their customers. We believe our EVO platform, introduced at WISPAPALOOZA this year, delivers the critical performance improvements, embraces the reality of the operator’s business model in the face of stagnate ARPU, and protects their investment in PMP 450.

The PMP 450v now fully supports 6 GHz and 5 GHz in a single platform with Release 24.1.1, and is backward compatible with the existing PMP 450b platform. In January we expect the commercial release of Deep VC, which is demonstrating significant capacity improvements on PMP 450m in initial field testing. WISPs are upgrading their ePMP networks to ePMP 4500/4600 and seeing significant performance improvements with Release 5.9.1, with low-cost upgrades and backwards compatibility. Additional firmware updates coming in Q1 will further enhance performance and overall value proposition of the 4500/4600 series. Collectively, the R&D investment in our point-to-multipoint portfolio is significant and remains a significant percentage of our revenue in our 2025 plan, driving to the introduction of EVO in mid-2026.

So why will 2025 be any different? The conditions and pressures from competitors are still there, but there are two positive forces for the company. First, the inventory in the channel has normalized for fixed wireless broadband, and in particular our Enterprise product lines. Secondly, continued reduction in interest rates, which makes it less expensive for businesses to invest (both Cambium and its customers). To compete in the long run, Cambium believes that a low-cost, highly reliable solution to provide gigabit to the edge is the critical piece for everyone, and that is exactly where we are going.

I cannot speak to the stock price. Our public commitment to platforming is taking shape across our portfolio, and narrowing our product and market segment focus is delivering. Cambium simply needs to “say do” and our investors will respond accordingly. Cambium has been committed to the WISP industry since our inception and remains committed to the industry. We are investing for the future and fully expect to be there with you, enjoying the fruits of our labor.

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This is something I think about often these days,

It’s also interesting to see that Cambium Networks still has $46.5m in cash, which is twice its market cap.

It appears there is a lot of development in 450V and the future Evo Platform which is great; I believe Cambium is missing the mark in three key areas.

  • Industrial Customers
  • Medium Sized / Campus sized Businesses
  • Point to Point

Industrial Customers

No DIN Rail Switches
I’d love to see a range of IX1000 and IX2000 switches, that have additional features like Media Redundancy Protocol (MRP). EtherNet/IP and Profinet
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If I had my way,
IX1000 - L2 Rugged DIN Rail Managed Switch
IX2000 - L3 Rugged DIN Rail Managed Switch
IX3000 - L3 Rack Mounted Industrial Switch

IP67 Switches
In addition to the industrial switches, there needs to be a range of watreproof switches for rollingstock, mining, factories etc.

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No 450i SM and 450i ATEX / HAZLOC SM Replacement
Cambium Network’s 450i SM is highly popular with mining and industrial customers due to their rugged integrated flat panel; the upcoming 450v range doesn’t have a replacement that will meet these customer’s needs. A parabolic dish is a hard pass for these customers!

Medium Sized / Campus sized Businesses

No 40/100Gb Ethernet Switch
At minimum there needs to be a range of muiltigig switches in both RJ45 and Fibre; the EX4000 range of switches should have a 28 and 52 10Gbps copper range with 40 or 100Gn fibre uplink.

In addition they should have a 40 and 100Gb fibre switch.

No Rack Mounted Router
There needs to be a rack mounted version of the NSE3000 (NSE3000R Maybe), along with an improved rack mounted NSE4000 and NSE5000 for larger businesses.

No Virtual Applicance
Cambium is behind the market with no virtual appliance for Azure and AWS

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Wi-Fi 7
Most brands are full steam ahead with Wi-FI 7 with indoor and outdoor models, it seems Cambium was quick out the gate with the X7-35X but hasn’t released any other product since then

Special shout out to difficult Wi-Fi naming conventions compared to other products in the range.

SD-WAN - Bonding
With Starlink and multiwan solutions, having bonding would allow cambium to gain reoccurring revenue and grow the NSE’s userbase. Peplink’s SpeedFusion is leading the market and could allow Cambium to build on the popularization of network bonding.

Point to Point Links

42% of Cambium Networks revenue is from Point-to-Point link sales, yet their flagship product isn’t a Cambium product but Ceragon.

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Ceragon Replacement
Cambium Networks needs to seriously invest in their own competitive product to the IP20 and IP50 product from Ceragon, this should have a focus on ease of use as the Ceragon product can be difficult to understand and use.

60GHz
cnWave 60GHz is an interesting product but even with the V3000 setup in a point to point configuration this product fails to compete with Ubiquiti and Ceragon in every way; it’s virtually useless for anything more than 1Km when Ubiquiti can get 12Km out of a link…

PTP550 and PTP670 Replacement
It would be great if we could get a replacement for the 550 and 670, maybe a
harmonization of the range that can fulfill the role of both products within their niche.

Special Mention

Subscribers on cnMaestro, how is it possible that we can’t manually add ePMP and 450 subscribers to the map?

I’m sure I can bring up many other points,

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Cambium Networks has $76M in debt which means they have a net cash position of negative $30M. Their cash came from a Bank of America loan and they are in breach of their loan covenants so they are unlikely to secure favorable bank loans or raise funds by diluting shares, given their current market cap.

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I missed that debt figure in the investment presentation; not good.

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@Tandr06 It’s also a problem that you feel the need to disclaim your post by stating you’re not a troll. You should be able to have an open and honest conversation about issues without worrying about being censored or accused of trolling. Censorship, ignoring problems, and blaming the messenger clearly aren’t working.

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I don’t disagree with you there. I have been booted from other equipment forums a few times. Probably the most notable was saying “SunMax has about a much of a chance at success as the Grizzlies have at winning the Finals, let alone getting there”. To be fair I said that in like 2018 after they had a terrible previous season. It was the quickest I’ve ever been banned

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It hasn’t been as bad on here. But on the UBNT forum they used to have the “Super User” fanboys that seemed to be able to get people banned. Add that to little fanboy/employees crying when you say anything negative about the company, and you get banned lol

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I don’t understand how people become so attached to their vendor choices that they feel threatened by others expressing negative opinions about those vendors and their products—but here we are.

I don’t know much about the SunMax or the Grizzlies, but I have good reason to doubt that silencing criticism, no matter how snarky, accomplished anything useful. Seems like moderators abusing the little bit of power they have.