Jerry Guo, who founded cable and wireless technology company Casa Systems 20 years ago, announced during his company's fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this week that he's retiring, effective soon ... very soon. Friday.
The University of Wisconsin-trained electrical engineering doctorate, who had stops at Bell Labs and Motorola, will sustain a sizable presence at the Andover, Massachusetts-based tech vendor he built, continuing to serve on its board and remaining its largest investor.
Casa has hired a search firm to line up Guo’s successor. Company chief financial officer Edward Durkin will serve as interim CEO until that individual is found and hired.
Guo’s announcement didn't come at a particularly auspicious time, however, with Casa also reporting that a “major North American cable customer” won’t be using the company’s cable tech products in its ongoing network upgrade.
”Although we will continue to receive maintenance revenue associated with that customer for 2023, we assume no future product revenues from their cable broadband infrastructure upgrade project in our 2023 guidance,” Durkin told equity analysts during Tuesday’s earnings call.
“And although we were surprised and disappointed by this news, this was not attributable to any cost cable product issues,” Durkin added.
So who is the client?
“We presume Charter has taken a pass on including Casa in its upgrades,” Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold wrote in an investor note.
For the quarter, Casa reported revenue of $84.4 million, beating consensus forecasts. ■
