Extreme Networks delivered a strong third quarter with revenue at $332.5 million, up 16% year over year. CEO Ed Meyercord said the vendor has achieved double-digit growth in eight of the past nine quarters, and attributed this quarter’s performance to improvements in its supply chain and new partnerships across retail, sports, education and heath care.

The third quarter results are a slight drop from Extreme’s previous quarter that ended in January, which saw the vendor pull in a record $380 million in revenue.

Extreme’s bookings typically decline sequentially in the March quarter, Meyercord said during a company earnings call. But this year bookings grew from December, “reflecting strong demand.”

“With our funnel of opportunities remaining robust, we expect more normal seasonality and higher sequential growth in Q4. We expect total revenue growth to accelerate to over 20% from the prior year based on improved product availability,” he added.

On the heels of several notable partnership announcements, Meyercord said he’s confident in Extreme’s ability to “take market share, given the size of its market, where small share gains have a big impact on growth rate.”

This year the vendor extended its SD-WAN to the edge of the network to allow users to extend network fabrics across separate data center, campus and branch locations. According to Meyercord, Extreme plans to expand its subscription business to its entire hardware portfolio in the fiscal 2024 year.

Additionally, the company recently announced the hiring of Kevin Rhodes as its new CFO.

“I'm excited about our incoming CFO Kevin Rhodes, who starts on May 30 and brings a wealth of experience from several successful SaaS companies,” Meyercord said. “Kevin has a great track record of delivering operational and financial excellence with a clear focus on shareholder value.”

Among the partnerships Extreme announced this year is a deal with Kroger –- one of the largest U.S. grocers with around 2,800 stores across the country – which will now be outfitted with the vendor’s cloud management and Wi-Fi 6E access points. Meyercord touted the Kroger deployment as “the world's largest cloud managed network,” with more than 110,000 access points.

Meyercord pointed to several global healthcare organizations investing in Extreme solutions including Prima CARE in the US, but said Extreme’s largest verticals remain government and education at over 35% of total bookings this quarter.

Extreme also partnered with Comcast to make professional baseball’s Oracle Park the first 100% Wi-Fi 6E-ready professional sports venue.

“We're being invited to compete for larger projects and we're winning more,” Meyercord said.

Interim CFO Cristina Tate at the earnings call noted the supply chain environment is improving significantly and lead times are coming down faster than expected.

“During the third quarter our direct customer order backlog did remain flat,” Tate said. “With product shipment lead times coming down, our distributors are adjusting their stocking orders to align with delivery timing.”

Tate said at the end of the third quarter Extreme’s backlog represented five times its expected normalized level. The vendor “continues to expect the normalized level of backlog to be in the range of 75 to $100 million by the first fiscal quarter in 2025.”

Products being delivered to customers and networks installed quicker will drive subscriptions, services, bookings and billings that in many cases have been deferred or delayed until products are delivered to match service terms, Tate said.

“We continue to expect that the reduction in expedite fees and shipping costs combined with the full impact of our recent pricing actions will lead to a continued recovery and growth margin in the fourth quarter and into fiscal year 2024,” she added.

“Although distributor backlog is releasing at an accelerated pace, our scenario based planning gives us confidence to reiterate our long-term guidance of mid-teens revenue growth,” Tate said.