WDC's sales rise with telecom, solar projects

Brazil's telecom and energy equipment supplier WDC Networks expects to generate 808mn reais (US$157mn) in revenue during the 2023-27 period, driven by solar power and telecom contracts signed last year. 

In its latest financial report, WDC said it closed 1,214 new contracts last year, with an average term of 53 months.

Overall, the group reported sales of 1.5bn reais last year, up 7%. In Q4, sales were 379.7mn reais, up by 8%.

The telecom business accounted for 49% of Q4's total, or 186mn reais. In the year, this segment generated 725.4mn reais of the company's sales, down 4.1%.

WDC claims to have closed large supply contracts with some of the largest ISPs in Brazil in the leasing model (technology-as-a-service, or TaaS) and to have achieved a market share of 20% by the end of 2022 in the sale of optical network units (ONUs), up from 13.6%.

In Q3, the company concluded what it claims to be its largest TaaS contract with one of the biggest ISPs in Brazil, which it did not name. The project is worth 189mn reais and is set to be completed by March, CEO Vanderlei Rigatieri told BNamericas in January.

“In addition, we evolved in the implementation of our new strategic positioning, through which we have sought to stop supplying only products and start to commercialize projects, adding engineering and execution capacity through our partners and leveraging our TaaS business model, with turnkey projects (involving network construction and activation of new subscribers) and datacenter projects (edges and centrals),” the company said in its financial statements.

The solar energy business generated 415mn reais in sales last year, up 24.6%, despite the entry of new distributors in the segment that generated greater competitiveness. 

“We’re seeing a very big opportunity for the [solar] plants in 2023. We've closed five plants in the agribusiness segment,” Rigatieri said in January.

Meanwhile, the enterprise segment saw greater customer demand for data security solutions, and a post-pandemic resumption of volumes related to professional audio and video, said the company.