Ciena Earnings Preview

Motley Fool Staff
Updated

Ciena (NAS: CIEN) came in under analysts' estimates last quarter, but now has a chance to fix things this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday. Ciena is a provider of communications networking equipment, software, and services that support the transport, switching, aggregation, and management of voice, video, and data traffic.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on this stock with 14 analysts rating it as a buy and only one rating it as a sell. Analysts like Ciena better than competitor Infinera overall. While analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.

  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $443.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 13.7% from the year-ago quarter.

  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.21 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.27 to a loss of $0.18.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 84.2% giving it an outperform rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars with 86.2% assigning it a rating of outperform. Fools are keen on Ciena and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 187 posts in the past 30 days. Ciena's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:

Now let's look at how efficient management is at running the business. Traditionally, margins represent the efficiency with which companies capture portions of sales dollars. The following table shows gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q2

Q1

Q4

Q3

Gross Margin

39.7%

38.9%

40.3%

37.0%

Operating Margin

(13.3%)

(17.1%)

(19.4%)

(25.5%)

Net Margin

(15.0%)

(18.2%)

(19.2%)

(28.2%)

For all our Ciena-specific analysis, including earnings and beyond, add Ciena to My Watchlist.

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At the time thisarticle was published

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