Topic: How To Invest

Hi Pat: What’s your opinion on Ciena? Thanks.

Article Excerpt

Ciena Corp., $18.65, symbol CIEN on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 93.1 million; Market cap: $1.8 billion; www.ciena.com), makes networking equipment that lets phone carriers transmit files that contain large amounts of data, like video. AT&T and Verizon are the company’s major customers. Ciena’s shares recently took a big drop after the company reported a bigger-than-expected loss in the latest quarter. Excluding one-time items, the company lost $0.24 a share in the three months ended April 30, 2011, compared to a loss of $0.13 a share a year earlier. The latest figure was worse than the consensus estimate of an $0.11-a-share loss. Revenue rose 64.9%, to $417.9 million from $253.5 million. Even so, that was below the consensus revenue estimate of $456.1 million. The sales increase reflected the company’s purchase of some of the networking assets of bankrupt Nortel Networks. Ciena expects sales growth to remain slow in the next quarter, as well. That’s because it will soon release new optical switches, so…