Ciena’s Fiscal Q3 Ok, But With Cautious Guidance

August 30th, 2012 by · 1 Comment

Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) followed up its upbeat fiscal Q2 report with a more muted fiscal Q3 report this morning.  Revenues came in at $474.1M, toward the upper end of guidance and a hair above analyst expectations, while adjusted loss per share of $0.04 was slightly below expectations.  It’s probably the Q4 revenue guidance that will attract the most eyes though, coming in light.   Here’s a quick table in some context.  

$ in millions FQ3/11 FQ4/12 FQ1/12 FQ2/12 FQ3/12 FQ4/12(guidance)
-Packet-Optical Transport 266.5 296.2 266.3 318.0  298.5
-Packet-Optical Switching 40.7 41.2 43.4 31.0 37.8
-Carrier Ethernet Solutions 40.5 28.8 21.9 30.6 31.3
-Software and Services 87.6 89.3 85.1 98.0 106.5
Revenue 435.3  455.5 416.7 477.6   474.1  455-480
Adj. OPEX 175.2 180.8 175.4 172.9  175.6  low 180s
Adj. GM% 44.1% 43.2% 41.9% 39.6%  39.6%  ~40%
Adj. EPS 0.08 -0.14 -0.17  0.04  -0.04

Sequential growth in packet-optical switching and software/services were not quite enough to offset the lower transport number.   On the other hand, opex remained below $180M.  Guidance for revenue of $455-480M in fiscal Q4 was below the $499.5M composite analyst estimate on Yahoo Finance.

Ciena blamed the lack of fireworks on the sluggish economy. According to CEO Gary Smith:

“We are experiencing the effects of ongoing macroeconomic challenges and slower than expected roll-outs of new design wins. However, our approach to the market is working, our OPn architecture vision is gaining traction with customers globally, and our view of the long-term opportunity is unchanged.”

The stock is down in premarket trading, we’ll see how the day goes though.

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Categories: Financials · Telecom Equipment

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