Arris CEO Bruce McClelland said the warrant agreements carved out with Comcast and Charter last year were necessary to make the cable operator clients “comfortable with the level of spend” that increased after Arris purchased No. 2 rival Pace.
“Comcast has been such an important customer to us,” McClelland said, speaking to investors Wednesday at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. “They helped us with our Motorola acquisition a few years ago … It felt like a natural evolution of the relationship.
RELATED: Arris offers equity to Comcast to boost cloud business
In June of 2016, Arris entered into an agreement with Comcast that gave the operator a stake in the vendor—up to 8 million shares—based on sales of network and cloud products. It entered into a similar agreement with Charter in October, ceding that MSO up to 6 million shares.
RELATED: Charter and Arris set up warrant agreement tied to network and cloud sales
“We made sure the way the deals were structured, it was beneficial to us, as well,” McClelland added. “But it’s all about, how do we make customers comfortable with us?”
Arris, which is coming off successive hot sales quarters, has seen its stock price shoot up more than 40% in one year to just under $30 a share.
The Suwanee, Georgia-based vendor will report its full year and fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 22.