Juniper Cuts Q1 Forecast
It's the latter point that investors seem to like. Juniper had set the cost-cutting wheels in motion late last year, lowering executive salaries and cutting other costs while planning to leave R&D intact. (See Juniper Tightens Its Belt.)
Analysts doubted the plan -- which appeared to leave Juniper no recourse if revenues worsened -- but so far, it looks like it's worked.
While revenues for the quarter ended in March will be $760 million to $765 million -- well down from the $800 million to $830 million Juniper had predicted -- net income will be 16 or 17 cents per share, about what Juniper was expecting. (See Juniper Lowers Forecast.)
What's amusing is that Wall Street didn't quite believe Juniper's forecast in the first place. Analysts polled by Thomson agreed on net income of 17 cents per share, but their average revenue prediction was just $794 million.
Juniper stock was trading up $1.43 (9.1%) at $17.05 in early after-hours trading.
Juniper reports earnings on April 23.
— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading
Wall St has its doubts about Juniper becuase Juniper IR, corp communications communicates poorly. The way things are broken out often confuses and frustrates Wall St.
I think Juniper is a quality, straight up company, but really needs to trust its marketing people and needs to change its IR culture. When Juniper is asked a clear question, the response is most always something that few can easily understand and that appears to be deflection. Chambers is a master communicator, If Juniper improved here they would really clean Cisco's clock.
It always takes the QTR, or a announcement with real numbers to chill the fear on JNPR because no one ever gets a clear warm fuzzy freeling from them.
Just imagine If they did.