Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN) isn’t one of those surprisingly positive technology performance stories. But the world seems to have been expecting just that. Coming into the report several days ago, the story was all about how Ciena, the telecom/networking equipment company, might be benefitting from higher demand for bandwidth as people work/learn from home. Ciena has talked about the fact that the pandemic has accelerated the flight to quality suppliers, like itself, with competitors short on scale, supply chain, and balance sheet by comparison, leaving the company free to dominate the space.
However, that story has changed dramatically for the worse. And the action in the stock shows the result, with shares getting torched in response.
As far as the raw numbers for Q2, CIEN reported upside Q3 EPS and in-line revs while guiding Q4 revs below consensus. But the problem came in the guidance, with the company stating that it expects Q4 revs of $800-840 mln, well under consensus expectations. The excuse here is the obvious one: uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has led to more cautious customer spending behaviors and difficulties with operationalizing projects that impacted Q3 orders and led to a softening of its near-term outlook.
Ciena's revised view on market growth for this year is roughly flat to down, expecting challenges around restrained customer spending and business velocity to persist for several quarters.
The big takeaway is that this is the diametric opposite narrative from what we have been seeing with cloud computing and cybersecurity software names. All of these businesses should be benefitting from the shift to at-home work and the stress being placed on network capacity. But the proof is in the pudding.
Why might this be the case? A big reason is that Ciena isn’t a cloud-based remote sales engine. Its product is a hardware solution, at least partly, and demands in-person consultations. And its customers are service providers and MSO’s, rather than big enterprise firms, so the per-customer balance sheets are often a bit tighter during tough times.
Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN) provides network hardware, software, and services that support the transport, switching, aggregation, service delivery, and management of video, data, and voice traffic on communications networks worldwide.
The company's Networking Platforms segment offers hardware networking solutions optimized for the convergence of coherent optical transport, optical transport network switching, and packet switching. Its products include 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, 5430 Reconfigurable Switching System, Waveserver stackable interconnect system, CoreDirector Multiservice Optical Switches, and OTN configuration for the 5410 Reconfigurable Switching System, as well as Z-Series Packet-Optical Platform; 3000 family of service delivery switches and service aggregation switches, and the 5000 family of service aggregation switches, as well as 8700 Packetwave Platform and the Ethernet packet configuration for the 5410 Service Aggregation Switch; and 6500 Packet Transport System. This segment also sells operating system software and enhanced software features embedded in each of its products.
The company's Blue Planet Automation Software and Services segment provides multi-domain service orchestration, inventory, route optimization and analysis, network function virtualization orchestration, analytics, and related services. Its Platform Software and Service segment offers OneControl unified management system and platform software services, as well as manage, control, and plan software.
The company's Global Services segment provides consulting and network design, installation and deployment, maintenance support, and training services. The company sells its products through direct and indirect sales channels to network operators. Ciena Corporation has collaboration with Infoblox Inc.
CIEN has had a rough past week of trading action since delivering the bad news, with shares sinking something like -26% in that time. That said, chart support is nearby and we may be in the process of constructing a nice setup for some movement back the other way.
Our CIEN Earnings Summary:
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Ciena beats by $0.24 on EPS, revs in-line with expectations, big miss on guidance
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Q3 (Jul) earnings of $1.06 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.24 better than the S&P Capital IQ Consensus of $0.82
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Revenues rose 1.7% year/year to $976.7 mln vs the $974.49 mln S&P Capital IQ Consensus.
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Commentary on Q: "Although COVID-related market dynamics have resulted in an orders slowdown and are likely to adversely impact our revenue for a few quarters, we are confident in our ability to continue executing on our strategy and expanding our market leadership."
Our CIEN Research and Conference Call Notes:
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Seeing increased caution in customer spending behaviors resulting in Q3 orders coming in below revs
Began to see effects of COVID-19 materialize late in Q3
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Saw significant decline in orders
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Less new business initiatives
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Expects overall optical market to be flat to decline yr/yr
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Gross margin was higher due to higher revenue mix from existing business
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Believes underlying trend in growth in bandwidth remains in tact
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Expects Q4 revs of $800-840 mln vs $994 mln consensus
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Adj. gross margin 46-48%