Juniper Networks Earnings: Profits Dropped, But Investors Like the Details By Wall St. Cheat Sheet

Rising costs did not help S&P 500 (NYSE:SPY) component Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR) in the first quarter as profit dropped from a year earlier. Juniper Networks, Inc. offers products and services that facilitate the deployment of services and applications over the Internet.

Don’t Miss: Wall St. Cheat Sheet’s newest Feature Trades of the Month>>
Juniper Networks Earnings Cheat Sheet for the First Quarter
Results: Net income for Juniper Networks fell to $129.8 million (24 cents/share) vs. $163.1 million (30 cents/share) a year earlier. A decline of 20.5% from the year earlier quarter.

Revenue: Rose 20.7% to $1.1 billion YoY.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: JNPR fell short of the mean analyst estimate of 32 cents/share. Estimates ranged from 30 cents per share to 34 cents per share.
Quoting Management: “Juniper delivered solid results in the first quarter and continued to build on market momentum,” said Kevin Johnson, chief executive officer at Juniper Networks. “We are executing on our innovation roadmap with new solutions that define our vision of the new network. Innovation is at the core of our multi-year growth agenda.”

Key Stats:

The company has enjoyed double-digit year-over-year revenue growth for the past five quarters. Over that span, the company has averaged growth of 22.8%, with the biggest boost coming in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year when revenue rose 26.4% from the year earlier quarter.

Competitors to Watch: Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU), Riverbed Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:RVBD), ADTRAN, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADTN), Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN), and Tellabs, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLAB).

Juniper’s Seesaw: Revenues Up, Margins Down

Juniper Networks posted first quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday, growing revenue by 21% while hitting earnings that were in line with estimates. The stock initially rallied after hours.

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Juniper reported its non-GAAP income per share for the first quarter of 32 cents, up 19% from the first three months of 2010. The number was in line with analysts’ consensus forecasts and was down 24% on a sequential basis. Net income was $129.8 million.

Juniper’s earnings came on top of $1.102 billion in revenues, a 21% gain from the same period a year ago, down 7% sequentially. The network products and services company announced its operating margin had fallen to 22.3% on a non-GAAP basis from 23.2% sequentially, 24.5% on a year-over-year basis.

“Juniper delivered solid results in the first quarter and continued to build on market momentum,” said Kevin Johnson, chief executive officer at Juniper Networks. “We are executing on our innovation roadmap with new solutions that define our vision of the new network. Innovation is at the core of our multi-year growth agenda.” (Read Apple iOS Actually Ooutreaches Android By 59% In US).

Looking forward, Juniper expects overall demand environment for Service Provider and Enterprise market to remain strong, while the effects of the Japanese crisis will be felt in the second quarter, read the release. Second quarter revenue is expected at $1.13 to $1.18 billion (an increase of 16% to 21%) with non-GAAP net income in the 31 to 34 cent range. Operating margins are estimated to be 22.5% plus or minus 0.5%.

Shares in Juniper had closed the session at $38.57, up 0.6%. In early afterhours trading, investors appeared please at the results, with the stock trading up 2.5% or 94 cents to $39.41 by 4:42 PM in New York.

Juniper Networks Q1 results meet analyst views

Juniper Networks Inc. said Tuesday that its first-quarter profit fell as higher costs overshadowed increasing demand for its networking equipment.

The results met analyst expectations but Juniper gave guidance for lower-than-expected earnings in the second quarter.

Shares of Juniper, however, rose more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.
Citing to preliminary results, Juniper said that in in the January-March period it earned $129.8 million, or 24 cents per share, compared with 163.1 million, or 30 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

When excluding unusual items, the company earned 32 cents per share, which is what analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

Revenue climbed 21 percent to $1.10 billion, matching analyst estimates. The majority of revenue came from product sales, which rose 22 percent to $877.4 million.
Expenses also rose, however, jumping 24 percent to $558.5 million.

For the current quarter, Juniper predicted an adjusted profit of 31 cents to 34 cents per share on revenue of between $1.13 billion and $1.18 billion.

Analysts are hoping for adjusted earnings of 36 cents per share on $1.16 billion in revenue.

Juniper’s stock increased $1.23, or 3.2 percent, to $39.70 in after-market trading. The stock had finished regular trading up 21 cents at $38.47.

Juniper Networks merges network core elements

Unipar Networks is developing a massive change that would replace the IP (Internet Protocol) routers in core networks and service providers to combine optical and electronic media that now exist in separate systems with dedicated staff.

The PTX series of transport packets Switch platform, of which the first products will be delivered in the first quarter of next year, combines two technologies that companies use to avoid driving in the center of their networks. Involves routing processor-intensive work to examine each packet, and often it is not necessary for traffic just to cross the network core. In contrast, companies using MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) and optical switching, neither of which requires complete understanding of routing traffic to move through the core. Continue reading “Juniper Networks merges network core elements”

Cloud, mobility will drive revenue, Juniper says

Juniper Networks has reaffirmed its long-term forecast for annual revenue growth of 20 percent or more, and he met with financial analysts on Thursday after two great product line introductions.

The company continues to focus solely on networking and believes it can continue to take market share from its competitors by seizing architectural transitions driven by the explosive growth of data traffic in enterprise networks and carrier, CEO Kevin Johnson, said at the annual meeting of financial analysts meeting in San Francisco Juniper.

Juniper started the conference by introducing the PTX series of transport packets Switch line, a base platform providers that combines packet switching and optical networking components. This followed the announcement of QFabric of Juniper, a new architecture designed to reduce data center networks to a logical switch. Simplification of networks is in the center of the company’s global strategy, aimed at both the network expansion and cost reduction.

Cloud computing and mobility are the main drivers of the new demand for networking, “said Johnson. As carriers and enterprises seeking to expand their networks, which require simpler architectures, as the current model involves the deployment of multiple devices, he said. He compared it to a computer model in which each type of application requires its own dedicated server Juniper hardware.

“The legacy network approach is not sustainable,” said Johnson. “The industry is being overwhelmed by the complexity of this model of legacy.”

A service provider who subscribes to this view is Japan’s NTT Communications, which in the past two years has seen traffic on its Internet backbone network across the Pacific will increase from 180 g bps (gigabits per second) of 450G bps . Expect to see that grow to 600G basis points later this year, said Kempei Fukuda, senior director of NTT’s global network, who spoke on a panel at the conference of Juniper. As traffic load grows, competition is also forcing NTT to sell bandwidth at lower prices, said Fukuda. NTT plans to move all your network traffic basic standard Internet routers for the type of converged architecture in the PTX platform in the coming years, he said.

The analyst Mark Sue of RBC Capital Markets believes Juniper likely to reach its forecast for revenue growth long term. The company reported revenue growth of 23 percent in 2010.

“The tail wind is behind them,” said Sue. A key variable is the speed with Juniper can begin to recognize revenue from products and PTX QFabric said. Is expected to start shipping in the third quarter and first quarter of next year, respectively. Expanding its target market with new types of products will also be crucial, “said Sue.

Johnson downplayed the vulnerability of the deficit Juniper margin products such as those recently hit Cisco Systems, due to the popularity of some lower-margin switches. President and CEO of Cisco, John Chambers, on Tuesday characterized the deficit as an unpleasant surprise. Johnson said that Juniper is focused on innovative value-added switches instead of those who are more subject to price pressures.

Juniper’s leadership also distanced himself from Cisco, emphasizing its focus on networking. In recent years, Cisco has expanded its scope to include consumer electronics and server systems. Despite claims that its new Juniper JUNOS Express chipset is one of the world’s most powerful processors, including CPU servers, the company has no plans to sell computer systems and storage, according to Pradeep Sindhu, vice president, director technical and founder. Juniper believes he can do more for the data center networking gear with the servers, because, as data centers become larger, the network plays a major role in performance, Sindhu said.

To enter other parts of central data also raises the risk of offending members of Juniper, such as IBM, Dell and NetApp, which are helping to sell computer networking company, Sue of RBC said.