Ciena Corp (CIEN)

[chmcnfunds]

Seeking Alpha via dynect-mailer.net
3:00 PM (14 minutes ago)

Ciena rallies on bullish FBR note, peers/suppliers also up • 2:59 PM

FBR's Scott Thompson thinks Ciena (CIEN +7%) will deliver a beat-and-raise FQ4 report on Dec. 12, and sees the telecom equipment vendor benefiting from carrier adoption of network architectures that feature "more intelligence and flexibility at the optical layer."

Thompson sees carriers building more advanced metro optical networks, replete with data centers that enable services such as content caching, app hosting, and advanced mobile messaging. He points to a recent optical switching deal between Verizon and Ciena as an example of how the latter benefits from this trend, and sees a similar deal with AT&T arriving soon.

At the same time, he cautions optical gross margins "could be under pressure," thanks to aggressive pricing from Infinera (INFN +2%), lengthy deployment times, and the adoption of software-defined networking controllers (CYNI is among the companies providing them) that remove some intelligence from the optical layer.

Ciena flew higher three months ago following its FQ3 report. The company reported solid demand for its integrated Ethernet switching/optical networking hardware, which now accounts for 56% of revenue.

Infinera is following Ciena higher, and so are Finisar (FNSR +5.2%), JDS Uniphase (JDSU +3.1%), Fabrinet (FN +1.8%), and AppliedMicro (AMCC +3.9%).
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