Juniper misses revenue estimates on weak networking gear demand

Juniper Networks

25/04/2024 22:15

April 25 (Reuters) - Juniper Networks  JNPR.N  missed
Wall Street estimates for first-quarter revenue on Thursday, hit
by sluggish demand for the networking gear maker's products in
an uncertain economy.
    Weak demand from inflation-hit wireless carriers and cable
operators, as well as stiff competition from Cisco Systems
 CSCO.O , Arista Networks  ANET.N  and chip designer Nvidia
 NVDA.O  in the networking space has been a drag on Juniper.
    Sunnyvale, California-based Juniper counts firms such as
AT&T  T.N , BlackBerry  BB.TO , Crown Castle  CCI.N , among
others as its customers.
    In its preliminary results for the quarter ended March 31,
the company posted an adjusted profit of 29 cents per share,
compared with analysts' estimates of 40 cents per share.
    Revenue fell 16% to $1.15 billion from a year earlier,
falling short of analysts' average estimates of $1.24 billion,
according to 12 analysts polled by LSEG.
    Juniper's CFO Ken Miller said total product orders were
about flat from a year earlier. However, cloud order growth
rebounded in the first quarter, seeing double-digit growth
year-over-year and sequentially.
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise  HPE.N  struck a deal in January
to buy Juniper for $14 billion, as it looks to tap into
Juniper's offerings such as network security and AI-enabled
enterprise networking operations (AIOps).

 (Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh
Kuber)
 ((Jaspreet.Singh@thomsonreuters.com; https://twitter.com/i_jass;))