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Technology Stocks : Ciena (CIEN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Fulop who wrote (10350)	2/15/2001 7:53:47 AM
From: James Fulop	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12623

CIENA Reports First Quarter Revenue of $352.0 Million, Adjusted Net Income of $0.18 per Diluted Share Level 3 Announced as New MultiWave CoreDirector™ Customer FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE LINTHICUM, MD , February 15, 2001 – CIENA Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN) today reported revenue of $352.0 million for its first fiscal quarter ended January 31, 2001. CIENA's first quarter sales represent sequential revenue growth of more than 22 percent over the Company's fiscal fourth quarter revenue of $287.6 million, and an increase of more than 130 percent as compared to the same period a year ago when the Company reported revenue of $152.2 million. Adjusted net income for the first quarter, exclusive of payroll tax on stock option exercises, was $54.1 million, or $0.18, earnings per diluted share. This represents an increase of approximately 31 percent compared with adjusted net income for the previous quarter, exclusive of payroll tax on stock option exercises and provision for doubtful accounts, of $41.3 million, or $0.14, earnings per diluted share. For the same period in the previous year, the Company reported adjusted net income of $9.1 million, or $0.03, earnings per diluted share.1 Consensus of First Call estimates for CIENA's first quarter fiscal 2001 was $0.15 earnings per diluted share. "CIENA continues to see robust growth opportunities across its family of next-generation intelligent optical networking products," said CIENA Chairman and CEO, Patrick Nettles. "We believe CIENA's strong growth and good order visibility in an otherwise uncertain carrier spending environment results from our exclusive focus on next-generation optical networking equipment and our position as a strategic supplier to leading service providers." "There is no question that economic factors are causing service providers to more carefully scrutinize where they spend their budget dollars," said Gary Smith, CIENA's president and chief operating officer. "It is just this sort of dynamic that we believe is benefiting CIENA by accelerating the shift from cumbersome, legacy network architectures to less costly, more efficient, intelligent next-generation optical network architectures." CIENA continues to diversify its customer base, adding three new customers in the first quarter, one of which, MetroRed, has been named publicly. In addition, CIENA also made initial optical networking equipment shipments to Level 3, a significant new MultiWave CoreDirector™ customer, during its fiscal first quarter. The Company's total revenue-generating optical networking equipment customer base now totals 43, of which, 30 contributed to CIENA's revenues during the most recent quarter. The first quarter marked the third sequential quarter in which CIENA recognized revenues from sales of CoreDirector, its next-generation, intelligent optical core switch and the first quarter where CoreDirector sales surpassed ten percent of total revenue. The Company believes that it has lengthened its industry lead in this critical product area, meeting its stated goal of achieving ten commercial customers for CoreDirector by the end of the fiscal first quarter. "We believe CIENA is positioned to successfully navigate and grow our business through the recent concerns about carrier spending," said CIENA's Smith. "Our exclusive focus on next-generation equipment means that we stand to be a primary beneficiary as carriers shift spending away from legacy equipment to intelligent optical networks that will enable them to lower capital and operating costs while delivering new, revenue-generating high-bandwidth services. Among next-generation equipment providers, only CIENA has both the breadth of products and the critical mass required to install and support these new optical networks on a global basis." Business Outlook Commenting on CIENA's business outlook Nettles said: "We expect our business will continue to grow faster than the overall market, provided we execute successfully. As a result, we are raising our revenue guidance from the 75 to 85 percent growth over fiscal year 2000 we offered last quarter. Based on current visibility, and factoring in the expected completion of our announced acquisition of Cyras Systems, Inc. by the end of the first calendar quarter of 2001, we now believe we will be able to achieve 2001 revenue growth of between 95 to 105 percent over last year, which translates into a revenue range of between $1.67 to $1.76 billion for fiscal year 2001." ciena.com