Ciena on a Slow Rebound
The optical and carrier Ethernet equipment vendor, which will see its revenues more than double when it completes the acquisition of Nortel Networks Ltd. 's Metro Ethernet networks unit, reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenues of $176.3 million, better than Wall Street's expectations and roughly in line with the same quarter a year earlier. (See Ciena Beats NSN to Buy Nortel's MEN and Slowdown Smacks Ciena.)
Analysts had, on average, been expecting fourth-quarter revenues of $167.7 million.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is still providing a fat slice of that business: Ciena said a "single, North American-based customer accounted for 19 percent of total fiscal fourth quarter revenue and 20% of total fiscal year revenue, and was the only greater-than-10 percent contributor for the quarter and the fiscal year."
Fourth quarter non-GAAP net loss (after one-time costs) was $10.7 million, or 12 cents per share, worse than the 7 cents per share analysts had expected.
The vendor's share price dipped by $0.86, or 6.5 percent, to $12.37 in early morning trading.
The company expects its revenues to creep up again in the current period by as much as 5 percent: A sequential increase of 0 to 5 percent would put revenues in Ciena's fiscal 2010 first quarter (ending January 31, 2010) at $176 million to $185 million.
After that, Ciena should start to see revenues from Nortel's MEN unit kick in, as the deal is set to close during the first three calendar months of 2010. (See NSN Hopes Dashed as Ciena/Nortel Deal OK'd.)
But along with the revenues from the MEN business -- the Nortel unit generated $998 million during the first nine months of this year -- come the costs of seeing the deal through: Ciena estimates that integrating MEN, including all transaction and associated IT costs of adding the Nortel unit onto the existing business, will come to $180 million.
Ciena CEO Gary Smith said on today's earnings conference call that, without those costs, the addition of MEN should be positive to Ciena's earnings in fiscal 2010 (November 2009 to October 2010). However, with those costs included, adding MEN to the business is expected to have a negative impact on Ciena's next financial year.
But Smith and his crew are still very positive about the outcome, and still talk about Ciena, which has some new products set to launch into the market soon, being very well positioned to expand its business as carriers spend more on adding capacity to their networks and building out new wireless backhaul capabilities. (See Gary Smith, CEO, Ci-MEN-a, Ciena/Nortel: Oh Yes, There's Overlap, and Ciena Catches Packet/Optical Convergence Bug.)
— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading
Abashford,
Is Mum the word? ;-)
Were you aware that sociopaths do not exhibit any "emotional" fufillment? Emotion is what gives life meaning. Those who are deprived of this faculty often end up failing, even after attaining lofty heights.
One of the reasons for this condition is because of the failure to appreciate consequence. Sociopaths also fail miserably on ethical issues, often because they are unable to feel empathy for others.
The dismissive behavior regarding how feelings bear on people who may be working in an environment where attrition is an everyday occurence is curious. Especially when combined with the stated opinion that no ethical issues were part of daily life. It is a fact that Nortel has been unable to retain an ethics officer for some time.
When framed with the spectacular failure embodied in the Nortel debacle, one possible theory is that sociopathic behavior prevails in the halls of Nortel. What a pity that a study can't be performed on the management at Nortel.
Catscans can now reliably discern people with sociopathic behavior, it is essentially no longer a question of opinion but of scientific fact. It turns out that certain areas of the brain do not respond to emotional content. Sociopaths "fake" emotions to fit in. These parts of the brain are therefore unused.
Perhaps someday there will be a test performed on people to determine if they suffer from this handicap. It turns out that this behavior costs society tremendously. It happens that there is a very good use for sociopaths, usually involving military endeavors. Testing such as this could optimize society at a fundamental level.
What is it like, Abashford, the perspective of having to please new masters, to start from scratch to accrue tenure in a new organisation? Is there fear that you might not be a fit?