Motorola Solutions, Inc. (MSI) June 3, 2026 Conference Transcript

All right. Good morning slash, I guess, good early afternoon. My name is Tomer Zilberman. I cover two areas within the bank, software, networking, and a little bit of public safety as well. Today, I'm joined by Jason Winkler, CFO of Motorola Solutions. Jason, thank you for being here with us today.

Pleasure, Tomer. Thanks for having us.

Yes, absolutely. Jason, maybe just a high-level question to kick off with here, Just for investors that are a little bit newer to the story, can you give us a brief background of Motorola Solutions? You have several different product lines from LMR, which is land mobile radio, very simply walkie-talkies for law enforcement agencies. Maybe it's a little too simple of an explanation. Very advanced walkie-talkies. Very advanced walkie-talkies. You have a video security portfolio for both fixed video and mobile video, which includes BodyWarn, which we will discuss about a little bit more in depth, and the command center, which is 911 call center software, right? And you also recently made an acquisition, recent as of the last couple of quarters, of Silvis, which is drone network technology, and most recently an acquisition as of the last few days for counter drone technology. So can you kind of just walk us through all the bits and pieces there?

Sure. So I'll start with the technologies, which is really what we sell and what our customers count on us for. So mission-critical networks, which includes purpose-built public safety networks for communications. Police, fire, first responders is a significant business for us, which we lead in. We added to it Syllabus, which we'll talk about in a minute, which is a mobile ad hoc infrastructure-less networking protocol that's commonly used in defense and in empowering drones in a defense and war-like context. And then we have also video solutions, which came to us through the acquisition of Avigilon five or six years ago, which is now over a $2 billion business for us. And then the last one that you mentioned is we are in the command center or 911 center empowering the software for the workflows of the call takers, the call routers, and the dispatchers, that really important epicenter of calling 911. The software there is generally ours, and we have strong presence there. So in terms of growth algorithm for this year, the mobile communications network technology, 8% to 9%, video, 10% to 11%, and the command center, 15%. Additionally, we record and report the business on two financial segments, full-line P&Ls, products and the one-time integration to make those products perfect, and then software and services, which is approaching 40% of the business. That's how we show profitability and the likes. But our customers count on us for an end-to-end video solution, for an end-to-end networking solution for comms, and an end-to-end solution for 911.

Let's talk about the biggest segment first, mission-critical networks. As you described, a combination of the LAN mobile radio and Silvis. If I take the growth outlook that you just gave, the 8% to 9%, we're seeing different growth rates upon the two segments. If I look at the history of the growth of the LMR segment over the last few years, it's grown anywhere from 7% to 9% for you guys the last several years. It's now, I think, you're guiding to about 3-ish percent growth for the core LMR business. And that's supplemented by Silvis that you have guided to grow 30%. Can you just think about the trajectory of each growth segment? Why are we seeing the deceleration in the LMR? And maybe on the Silvis side, how sustainable is that 30% growth target? Yeah.

So Silvis, on our recent earnings call, we increased our outlook expectations to be $750 million for the year. So that's an important sign for them. But also the core business of MCN, which would have been called LMR previously, we also expect to do $25 million better than we thought in February. And the growth characteristics, Tomer, are that the second half acceleration is implied in our guide. It's expected. We've talked about that since February. And the makeup of this year is really informed by prior period comps. Q2 in MCN or LMR specifically will be the last of some very elevated comps, which were a result of the backlog that we had that was, frankly, stuck because we couldn't get the requisite supply. lie. Once we did, we got that through. Customers were happy. It is presenting us with significant comps. But as we look at the second half, several things inform why we think growth will accelerate. First of all, demand, forward-looking demand orders in MCN and in LMR have been up double digits four quarters in a row, orders. We expect that double digits to continue. And with the opportunities ahead of us to turn that revenue in the second half is why we expect the characteristic of this year to be better growth in the second half. By the way, that's not unusual. That's happened pre-supply chain crisis where the attributes of growth are faster in the second half. We have the other thing about our business that I think sometimes isn't totally understood is in public safety. Our COO, Jack Malloy, likes to frame it and runs a very disciplined ship around deals, dates, and desks. We know through quotations, through customers, through engagement who has to approve it, when it needs to be approved, when the order is going to be received, when the supply is going to match it. All of that is a highly visible forecast through pipeline. That too is informing what we expect to happen in the second half. So MCN is in a very good spot. It's supplemented, as you mentioned, by Silvis. And both are strong and have good growth characteristics into the future.

Right. Maybe to continue the discussion on the core piece of the business first, I think you're right. There is a mechanics of backlog and tough comps that are kind of distorting the growth levels. But if you actually remove that, you know, there was maybe a little bit of a decline this quarter. But I think implicitly the second half LMR is supposed to grow six-ish percent, kind of upper or mid to high single digits. Without giving specific guidance, the historical trajectory of the LMR market is about low-ish single-digit growth, maybe GDP-type growth. As you think about the portfolio today and the customer demand today with things like Apex Next, is there an opportunity to sustain growth above that historical market growth?

It's a great market, as you mentioned. Actually, in the second half, we expect products, the segment I mentioned, organically to grow almost 10%. And even MCN or LMR is what we were describing, the core of organically to drive that 10% of growth as well. So strong attributes, actually even stronger than you mentioned, expected in the second half. LMR is a market that we've led in. We lead in public safety for P25. We lead in Tetra, and we lead in PCR. Those are the three kind of standards globally that are deployed. And the opportunities for us to continue to grow through the incumbency that we have in serving our customers in deeper and richer ways is a growth driver. We have customers that are counting us to do more and more to serve and maintain their networks, upgrading their networks. The devices that they're using on their networks are an opportunity for refresh. For example, we have by year's end this year, we'll have 300,000 Apex Next. That's our latest and greatest radio subscribed by year-end. That device is feature-rich. It comes to us at a premium when we sell it, and it comes at a $300 per year application revenue stream. So entering in next year, we'll have about an almost $100 million ARR business from the LMR incumbency that we have, which, by the way, we record in Command Center because it's apps. It's an extension into the command center, those applications. So we're creating growth not even with not just within the LMR, the category or MCN, but it's helping fuel growth within the command center technologies through the innovations and the applications that we're developing. So a great market, one we continue to lead. We spend almost a billion dollars in R&D. Half of that goes to LMR and continuing to advance the technology, which we think will be with and our customers have voted with their contracts years and years to come. The networks are only getting more complicated and better as we develop them.

Understood. Maybe moving on quickly to the Silvis side of the growth equation. You did talk about how you just raised the Silvis guidance for the year. Maybe a two-part question. One, if we look at the Silvis business over the last few years, even prior to when you acquired it, there was a strong connection to the Ukraine-Russia a conflict? How tied are you still to that? Is the incremental growth opportunity coming from that? Or are you starting to finally realize more revenues from global contracts? And the second part is you also talked last quarter about increasing manufacturing capacity. Now, is this kind of future-proofing the capacity, meaning you're trying to get supply ahead of demand? Or are you already seeing the demand here, and you're trying to get the supply to catch up?

Sure. So the Silvis demand continues to be internationally led, not just Ukraine, but UK, Germany and other NATO allies that are surely supporting Ukraine, but also preparing their own countries for the defense needed that drones empowered by Silvis can provide. Additionally, we're seeing greater penetration in the U.S. armed services with the routes to market that we have there. So we're really pleased with Silvis. And I remind people, Silvis is really a defense technology empowering drones in a battlefield context. You look at their press release when they introduce a new product. They talk about how that product benefits the modern warfighter. That's the use case for Silvis. It's defense, and it's an increasingly important one. Silvis as a platform is empowering over 100 different drone manufacturers and 150 different drone platforms. It's the choice when you want to deploy communications network that cannot be intercepted, jammed, taken down, interfered with. It's resilient and it's the best. That's the Silvis technology. That's why we really like it. Of course, it's built around RF capabilities, which is also at our core. So the technologists in our companies are very excited about that opportunity. But the route to market is about defense, and the investments that are happening there position it for growth. On your question on supply, not only is demand strong, we're increasing supply. So we've helped them increase their capacity in California, where they had been, but we also added a facility in Salt Lake, which is absolutely a future-proof facility. It's a large, modular facility that we will use to meet the demand and grow into for many years to come. It provides us with duality of sites, which is always important. It provides us with more output to match what we see as increasing demand.

Got it. Maybe just one more point on the defense aspect, right? You have a close partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense. Where are you positioned with the UAS groups one through five? First of all, I have very limited understanding of UAS groups one through five. So if you can help us walk through what that means. Smaller, right?

I mean, many of those categories are called attritable, meaning if it doesn't come back, that's acceptable. So the lower profile cost point of a drone. And of course, that needs to be matched with a lower cost option for empowering it from a communications protocol. So Silvis, which is primarily at the higher tier, it's a very resilient, robust offer, is also tiering into areas of smaller, attritable drones with the Streamcaster 5200. So they're doing both. They're empowering the top larger side, but also tiering the portfolio in a way that meets some of the demand that you're mentioning around the smaller size form factor. So growth in both places and taking that portfolio and expanding it is part of the strategy that Bob Beck and the founder, who now works for us and Jack Moy, have to expand that market in the DoD, beyond Army, into other parts internationally. And we're seeing good interest in that Silvis investment for sure.

Maybe segwaying into another part of the drone area, I would be remiss not to ask about your recent acquisition of Defend. First of all, it's counter drone technology. So can you talk about specifically what it does and how does it fit into your overall drone portfolio considering you have one part, which is Silvis, and another partnership with Brink Drones?

So while Silvis is defense, we covered that. You mentioned Brink. We have a strategic partnership with them and a route to market where together we enable drones as a first responders. Customers there are not battlefield warfighters. They're public safety. And DFR and Brink in our solution is eyes in the skies to see what's happening at an incident fast and bringing back video to the command center. It can also bring a payload to help somebody in need with maybe a medicine, et cetera. So it's an important tool for public safety, and we're well-positioned with our DFR portfolio with Brink. The most recent acquisition is around counter drones, securing skies, securing the city, securing the stadiums, securing airports, keeping drones out of places, unauthorized drones, and what we really like about Defend. And by the way, we've been working and have deep relationship with Zohar and team for four years. Yeah. We've admired their Enforce Air is their technology progression. They've had good success. We've routed to market with them on some federal law enforcement opportunities. And together, we think we can really take this deeper into public safety because they're the ones that are being expected to secure the skies. So it's an important solution to a pain point that our law enforcement agencies federally, domestically, and internationally have. And what we like about their technology is it does not just jamming airwaves and not just radar, but it does gracefully intercepts through cyber takeover a target, a drone, and gets it out of the airspace, lands it carefully. That's their differentiator, is that they can do not just jamming, not just radar, but intercept one drone or more in an area where other authorized drones might be desired to be. So it's that property and that cyber takeover solution that really differentiates what Zohar and team have done and the need for our customers. It's not only a technology extension, because it, again, is a form of RF sensing, but also it's a route to market. We have a sizable customer base who are eager to deploy these. Yes, there's some policy, regulatory, training, certification to use these systems. And we're going to work with our customers to work through that as well. The revenue profile that they're driving to year's end this year, we think they're going to achieve $185 million in revenue for Defend. And the last three years, they've grown 50% or more per year. That's a more than 50% CAGR. Right. And so we're really excited about the work they're doing and what we can do together. Not only is it growing, it's profitable. So from a financing standpoint, we have the close of Q4 for Defend, as well as Bell Canada, an acquisition that we're excited about that announced a while ago, that's a managed services operation of many networks in Canada. So together, we're likely to introduce about a billion more of debt, which is well within our headroom of 2x EBITDA. EBITDA this year is going to grow over $400 million. So to add a billion dollars of debt is well within our construct and we'll continue to have room and capacity to do additional M&A buybacks. We're already at $400 million quarter to date or through yesterday. So we want to maintain the flexibility to do our strategy around deployment of capital. And we're really excited about being in this drone space purposefully. Service for Defense, DFR with Brink, as well as now Counter Drone Technology with Defend, all of them serving our customers with specific needs.

Maybe to ask you a follow-up on the competitive landscape, I want to go back maybe to the growth and profitability part. But, you know, when we think about the drone as a first responder market, you guys are the leaders there with Brink as well as some other leaders such as Axon and Flock Safety that both have counter drone technology. So is the way to win this market more about the differentiation, about talking about how you can jam certain drones and not others? Or is it more about, you know, kind of building a holistic drone platform where there is a differentiation in the full capacity of the suite?

I think it comes down to the technology, but also how it's deployed. So if you think about the synergies we have within our LMR networks, our customers or we own and maintain and service LMR network towers, those are prime candidates to launch DFR from. There are prime candidates that install base to launch or configure, defend from. So there's a footprint opportunity as well as, of course, the consolidation of the technologies and all of them around RF sensing. So we like our position. We like the investments we've made. And we like that it ultimately is serving customers with pain points we know they have. We're engaging with them. And to have that discussion and now have the technology and the partnership and the route to market is a great place to be.

Got it. Now, maybe on the growth piece of the equation, right, you had mentioned, I think, last three years, 50 percent CAGR. What's the sustainability of that growth? And alongside the one billion in debt that you're raising for the acquisition, you know, what else can you tell us about profitability metrics?

Sure. So, you know, $185 million, we expect them to achieve this calendar year. You know, we'll add the billion of debt. We'll pay the financing associated with that. And yet still the opportunity we believe is that defend will be slightly accretive next year. So it has a good profitability base. It has a good growth outlook. If I think about growth opportunities, mitigation of drones, detection and mitigation of drones brings to us an additional $1 billion TAM. And we think that that TAM is going to triple by 2030. That's where the market opportunity is. And that's where DEFEND positions us to go after that opportunity. And with growth and profitability and some investments, we expect it to be slightly accretive next year. Got it.

Maybe last question on MCN, given we're starting to run a little bit low on time, radio infrastructure, right? You guys have disclosed that that accounts for about a quarter of the total MCN business. What's the opportunity with D-Series?

So D-Series is specifically around P25, which is the standard common here in the U.S., Australia, and a few other markets. D-Series is a new introduction of the infrastructure that powers these networks, these purpose-driven networks. It's a decade since its predecessor. It covers faster and better, consumes less power. It includes more network resiliencies with the addition of LEO for forms of backhaul connecting sites and providing yet another resiliency layer. Customers are pretty excited about it. we've announced some pretty big deals. The infrastructure that's in the field is aged and customers are buying an upgrade. And with that, of course, comes more services, more software, likely an extension of their maintenance contracts. So it's not only going to help us grow in the next several years on the infrastructure or the products and SI side, it'll also be a growth driver for services and software. So good receptivity from customers around the D-series, and it's just beginning.

Got it. Let's move on to video security. And I want to specifically ask you about body-worn within the market, because you announced, I believe it was last year, the SVX, which is an advanced body-worn camera, which you guys call a body-worn assistant. Can you first Maybe take us through the TCO advantage of the SVX given, you know, if you take a law enforcement officer who has a radio on their hip, you know, the body-worn camera in the middle and the RMS, you know, when you remove the RMS as part of the SVX equation, what kind of, you know, cost savings does an agency get from that?

Well, Tomer, we're thinking about the other way, removing the body-worn camera from someone else from the equation. The RMS, which was formerly a speaker mic, is now a body-worn assistant paired with Apex Next. So our cost synergy to the customer, our value proposition to the customers, you have a body-worn assistant. You have an industry-leading radio. Why do you need a third-party device to do exactly what's capable now on the SVX? It's not only a great audio assistant, it's a terrific video assistant, along with the back end and digital evidence management and all the capabilities of redaction that aren't really critical for that market. So our cost advantage in our TCO is about anchoring around mission-critical voice, additional modalities with LTE included, and the AI-assisted properties that are embedded in our device, as well as the back end. And the subscription that goes with it of $99 is priced at a discount to the incumbent. So we like our strategy here. It's one that we think wins over time. We've deployed 100 customers have chosen the solution. 30% of them have activated the video capabilities, and we're selling more and more of them. The activity, the funnel's high. And by the way, it also helps customers really think through their next upgrade because in order to pair SVX and have that pipeline, you're going to choose Apex next. Yet one more reason why customers are going to choose our industry-leading latest radio because they want the benefits of the SVX and they're paired together. So our strategy is one of to continue to meet customers, solve their pain points, and offer them an alternative and one that's easy to contractually choose as well as physically. You've got the device on you. Let's activate it and let's add that feature capability. That's really our strategy. I mean, I think if we look at the competitive marketplace for the body worn, I mean, the incumbent Axon had something like 80% market share, right?

And I think Motorola did a good job prior to the SVX of being an alternative for maybe the tier two, tier three agencies. But I think Axon really had a strong foothold on the tier ones. So when you think about everything you just discussed, does that finally put you in the conversation with the tier ones?

Well, I think we've done a pretty good job being in the market as an alternative. I mean, we've had, through acquisitions, been in the body-worn and in-car video since 2018 or 19. Great portfolio internationally. We do quite well on Greenfield. Most international customers are choosing their first ever body-worn opportunity. And when we go head-to-head, we do pretty well. It's the incumbency in North America that we're working our way through. And yes, the SVX strategy, we think, is a game changer for the opportunities and disrupting and winning flips into the future. In the meantime, we're going to continue to serve customers with their voice needs, the voice-assisted properties, and when they're ready to take on video at the next contract cycle, opportunity, frustration, et cetera, we're well positioned to do that. Right.

Maybe before we go back into the individual kind of segment lines, I want to ask you a more conceptual question, right? Because, you know, we spoke about some of the same competitors here who are also trying to grow into other areas of your market right now. I think Axon made two acquisitions for the 911, the command center, right? So you historically have touched more key parts of the public safety workflow across LMR, video, and command center, and you've had it for longer. So you've had more market mindshare awareness and the resulting market share. How do you think that the competitive landscape evolves over the next few years, not just on the point products, but as the platform as a whole?

You're right. We've been in the market a long time. There are 6,000 911 centers in the U.S. We have one or more parts of our solution in 60% of them. And so whether it's call taking or what we call Vested Next, whether it's CAD or records, the recordization of what happens during these incidents, or whether it's the dispatch, which ultimately makes its way into LMR communications and using voice to dispatch the nearest responder to help somebody, that entire workflow is integrated. It's not only integrated on-prem, it's integrated in the cloud. And traditionally, the barriers for 911 operators, which are critical operations, have been upgrades are painful and disruptive. And with our integrated fabric, we're making upgrades less painful. And if you choose our solution, it's naturally integrated. You don't have to do interfaces. So we really like where we're at. We're familiar with what those other possibilities were. Looked at them. We like what we have and we're differentiated where we have core, not over-the-top solutions, but end-to-end workflows that are becoming more and more integrated. And that's what customers really want. They want, in this critical solution, they want a vendor, a provider, a partner to solve their problems and do it in a way that has accountability and to be in all of the parts of the command center, including CAD, which is tough. which we have a strong presence in, that's like the epicenter of a 911 center. To be in CAD and records is really important. It demonstrates to our customers that we can solve their complicated solutions.

We have a few minutes left here, so maybe we want to open up to the room if anyone has questions. No? I'll keep going then. Maybe in the last few minutes, we'll talk about margins. Memory first. You called out last quarter that memory costs are doubling, right, from 50 million to 100 million. A little more than double, but yeah. A little more than double, but, you know, it roughly equates to, I think, about 2% of your COGS. So not a huge impact, but, you know, kind of want to back up and ask you, where are the memory impacts most prevalent and what steps are you taking off?

I mean, the categories are, you know, DRAM and flash in general. And, you know, it's a small portion of our bill of materials in total, as you mentioned. It's also small when it comes down to the amount of DRAM or flash in a camera relative to its overall bill of materials, the same for a device or a radio. Nonetheless, it's a headwind, right? So what are we doing about it? We're finding offsets elsewhere in our $6 billion COGS line, working with vendors as we did in prior scenarios, like when semiconductor costs were inflating, we were still growing up margins because we were finding offsets. We've done a little bit of pricing around particularly high memory content solutions like video recorders. So we've adjusted price a little bit there. But it's really about finding alternatives. We are getting the memory that we need. We're paying more for the memory. That's the reality of the market. But to be able to grow op margins, as we expect 100 bips this year, and grow it in both segments, despite this headwind, that's sort of, you know, table stakes, DNA, figure it out, that we expect our supply chain in teams as well as a little bit of price opportunity to do. Gross margins for the company, despite this headwind and even a little bit from tariffs, which still remain with us, different types of tariffs, we expect to remain comparable over last year. So the OE expansion and the opportunity that's there in front of us is positive. Right.

You beat me to the next question about operating margin, but maybe I'll ask one last question here is the funding environment, right? I think historically you talked about the OBBB kind of as a potential tailwind. I don't think we heard too much about it lately. Is there anything that you're seeing finally, you know, funds started flowing through the end of last year?

Are you seeing any kind of the overall funding environment for our state and local business, which is the heart of our North America is good. It's relatively similar to last year. Customers figure out funding and prioritization for what we've been talking about, which is mission critical. In the case of OBBB, some of our federal customers are seeing and using that opportunity, and we've seen a couple federal opportunities come our way with those as funding sources. So just starting to flow, it's over $150 billion for both DOD and DHS. So, again, one more opportunity for customers who need these solutions to find funding opportunities, which they generally do. Okay, Jason, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Tomer, for the time.

Thank you. Thank you all.