EXFO secures service assurance contracts with five new customers and strengthens focus on high-growth drivers

EXFO Inc. the communications industry’s test, monitoring and analytics experts, announced today the company has secured service assurance contracts with five new customers, including a previously announced agreement with eir in Ireland.

These multi-year, multi-million-dollar deals will contribute approximately US$5.0 million to EXFO’s bookings in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. They reflect market acceptance of EXFO Nova’s service assurance solutions and shared vision to transform communications networks with the highest degree of visibility in order to accelerate revenue-generating services and reduce downtime.

Four orders feature the extensive portfolio of EXFO Nova solutions, delivering core-to-radio access network (RAN) monitoring and optimization, including 5G capabilities, active and passive probes, subscriber experience metrics, and analytics. The fifth deal is focused on Nova Context for network inventory management use cases. This network topology software, which essentially maps network resources to related services in real time, will be used by the multi-country customer to obtain a holistic view of its next-generation network.

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“We’re pleased to add five new mobile network operators within a single quarter to our established customer base benefiting from Nova service assurance solutions,” said Philippe Morin, EXFO’s Chief Executive Officer. “These contract wins, which will bolster our SASS backlog for fiscal 2021, represent strong proof points that our recently launched Nova Adaptive Service Assurance vision is resonating strongly with customers. Given heightened demand for remote, centralized monitoring solutions in this new environment, Nova Adaptive Service Assurance’s capabilities allow mobile operators to automate critical functions, thus significantly reducing time to detect and resolve network issues without the presence of staff on-site at network operations and service operations centers.”

EXFO also announced a restructuring initiative to strengthen its market focus on high-growth drivers like fiber, 5G and cloud-native deployments, while mitigating the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on its business operations.

Restructuring charges of approximately US$3.0 million will be incurred under this plan mostly in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020 and are expected to generate US$5.0 million in annual cost savings.

“Although we had to make difficult decisions, it was necessary to re-align our resources toward rapidly expanding verticals, while reducing investments in lower-growth areas,” Mr. Morin added. “Profitable growth remains the cornerstone of our long-term strategy despite the pandemic.”