Ciena first quarter 2013 revenue, EPS beat Street

Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) today announced revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) figures for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 that beat Wall Street estimates. The news lifted optical communications stocks across the board in early trading today.

The optical transport and Ethernet switching specialist reported revenue of $453.1 million for the quarter ended January 31, 2013, almost $5 million better than consensus predictions. While this represented a sequential decline of $12.4 million, the figure is an 8.7% improvement over the same quarter of 2012.

On a GAAP basis, Ciena's still suffered a net loss in the quarter of $47.3 million or ($0.47 per share). Yet this also was a slight improvement over 1Q12, which came in at a loss of $47.7 million ($0.49 per share). Non-GAAP net income, though, was $12.3 million or ($0.12 per share). Wall Street analysts had predicted a non-GAAP loss of $0.14 per share.

Gross margin also improved sequentially from 41.3% to 43.2%.

“Our strong first quarter performance reflects a solid start to our fiscal year,” said Gary Smith, president and CEO of Ciena, via a press release. “We have positioned Ciena to take advantage of the underlying market dynamics, which are increasingly aligned with our strategy and competitive strengths. We believe the combination of our technology and market share leadership as well as our strategic customer relationships will enable us to continue growing faster than the market.”

Sequentially, Ciena saw slight gains in revenues from its Converged Packet Optical and Software and Services segments. However, these were not enough to offset declines in Optical Transport (down a bit over $14 million) and Packet Networking. All of these segments except Optical Transport improved over their 1Q12 marks.

Looking ahead to the second quarter, Ciena executives pegged revenues within a range of $465 to $495 million. Non-GAAP gross margin will be in the low 40% range; non-GAAP gross margin for the recently concluded quarter was 44.6%.

The good news buoyed Ciena’s stock, with shares up 2.31 to $17.25 at 10:40 AM Eastern this morning. Other optical stocks went along for the ride, which such companies as Finisar, Infinera, and JDSU receiving bumps in pre-market trading.

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