Juniper Comes Up Just Short Of Wall Street's Q3 Target
Juniper Networks on Tuesday reported substantial growth in both profit and revenues for its fiscal third quarter, but its results fell just shy of Wall Street expectations, causing its shares to slump after-hours.
For its fiscal third quarter, Juniper reported profit of $134.5 million, on 25 cents per share, up 61 percent percent from the $83.8 million, on 16 cents per share, it reported in the year-ago quarter. Revenues were $1.01 billion, up 23 percent from the $823.9 million in the same quarter last year. Product revenues grew 26 percent, Juniper reported, and service revenues grew 11 percent.
While solid, the results did miss expectations; analysts were expecting earnings of 32 cents per share on revenue of $1.02 billion. The result drove Juniper shares down as much as 9.7 percent in after-hours trading Tuesday.
Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson said Juniper's results reflected the company's ability "to deliver on the promise of the New Network with cost effective solutions that scale to meet growing network demand."
Johnson added that Juniper is on track to report 20 percent or better revenue growth for its fiscal year, following a 2009 that saw sales fall for Juniper for the first time since 2002.
Next: Major Events Of Q3, IBM And Blade
Among major events for Juniper in the third quarter was its $69 million acquisition of mobile security company SMobile Systems, which gained it 27 new employees.
Johnson was asked during the company's conference call about whether IBM's acquisition of Blade Network Technologies would negatively impact IBM's OEM relationship and strategic partnership with Juniper.
Johnson commented that there is some overlap with top-of-rack switching, but Juniper "has a very constructive, open dialogue with IBM" and that company views the acquisition as "a positive."
"Blade is a partner of ours, and IBM is a partner of ours," he said. "IBM was very transparent with us as they went through this in letting us know their intentions behind this."