JDS Uniphase proves its fiber
Sales soar 171% on a year-over-year basis
By Janet Haney & Chris Kraeuter, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 9:37 PM ET Oct 26, 2000 NewsWatch
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SAN JOSE, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- JDS Uniphase once again proved it isn't just an optical illusion Thursday, weighing in with closely watched first-quarter profit and sales figures that both surpassed Wall Street's estimates.
CEO Jozef Straus said the quarter's results were driven by JDS' "ability to meet customer expectations, our ability to ferret out new business opportunities, our ability to understand that business is still there, that Internet growth is still there and that the optical equipment manufacturers still need our product." Hear the Jozef Straus interview
Shares of JDS charged ahead to $82.75 in after-hours trading. Ahead of the news, the shares gained $3.44 to $74.44 in Nasdaq trading, having lost 57 percent in value since hitting a high of $153.38 in March.
JDS (JDSU: news, msgs) reported that pro forma net income totaled $177 million, or 18 cents a share, excluding merger-related charges and other one-time items. Analysts polled by First Call expected the fiber-optics giant to earn 16 cents a share.
In the year-earlier quarter, JDS earned $65 million, or 8 cents a share.
Revenue surged 171 percent to $786 million, surpassing some analysts' projections. Last year, the company's sales totaled $290 million. Read an earnings preview.
The company said its telecom sales were up 26 percent sequentially, reflecting the demand for fiber optics. Active components and modules represented 29 percent of sales, while passive components made up 60 percent of sales.
JDS, which has headquarters in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, and San Jose, Calif., makes equipment for fiber-optic telecommunications, signal processing and chip wafer inspection, and it sells its products to such companies as Alcatel, Ciena, Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks and Siemens.
In the wake of warnings by Nortel and Lucent, there were concerns that JDS would suffer from a weakening of the fiber optics market.
Straus, though, said the market is strong and he JDS has not experienced a slow down in optical parts spending.
The company also boosted financial estimates for the second quarter and the rest of 2001.
JDS now expects to earn 19 or 20 cents a share during the second quarter on percentage revenue growth in the high-teens. The previous expectation was for per-share earnings of 17 cents.
For the full year, JDS expects revenue growth of 115 percent to 120 percent more than the $1.77 billion projected prior to the fiscal year's start.
"It's quite staggering if you consider how much we have to grow quarter to quarter, as well as for the entire year, and we are challenging ourselves to live up to that," Straus said, who is also the co-chairman.
Prior to speaking with CBS.MarketWatch.com, Straus held a packed conference call for investors and analysts. He said at the beginning of the call, there were between 600 and 800 people on the call.
He said the unexpected amount of callers was due to the drubbing that fiber optic companies took on Wednesday. See a recap of Wednesday's action.
"After yesterday's meltdown, there were quite a lot of analysts and shareholders who wanted to get on the call," Straus said. "It's very gratifying that they wanted to hear what we had to say."
This glut of callers jammed the call center's lines, preventing some from hearing about the company's quarter and its future outlook. Those dialers who couldn't get on were met with a busy signal.
People who couldn't get into the call can dial in to a replay. Message boards were jammed with comments from investors venting their frustrations over the wait. Join in discussion about JDS Uniphase.
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