Will Ciena (CIEN) Pull Off An Earnings Surprise In Q4?

Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) is set to report fourth-quarter fiscal 2016 earnings on Dec 8, 2016. Last quarter, the company reported earnings of 35 cents per share, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 4 cents (12.90%).

Over the trailing four quarters, the company has posted an average positive earnings surprise of 10.84%. However, we note that Ciena has posted a negative return of 1.16% as against the Zacks Fiber Optics industry’s gain of 36.53% on a year-to-date basis

Let’s see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

Factors Influencing This Quarter

Rising demand for Packet Optical, Packet Networking and Optical Transport products and increasing use of service management software in the global communication market are positives for Ciena.

Expanding WaveServer customer base is also an encouraging factor. Moreover, the company has been named as the leader in the submarine cable upgrade market by HIS, which demonstrates Ciena’s portfolio strength and its improving pipeline. In this regard, the company noted that it has immense potential in the Asia-Pacific market.

Ciena expects revenues in the range of $700- $730 million in fourth-quarter fiscal 2016. We believe that the company’s strong product portfolio will help it to meet growth expectations in the to-be reported quarter.

Adjusted gross margin is anticipated to be in the mid-40s range, while adjusted operating expenses are likely to be in a range of $230 to $235 million, up sequentially.

However, rising competition from the likes of Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPE) continues to threaten Ciena’s market potential.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively show that Ciena is likely to beat earnings estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. This is not the case here, as you will see below:

Zacks ESP: Ciena’s Earnings ESP is 0.00%. This is because both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 39 cents. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Ciena carries a Zacks Rank #3, which increases the predictive power of ESP. However, we need to have a positive ESP to be confident about an earnings surprise.

We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 and 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

A Stock That Warrants a Look

Here’s a company that you may want to consider as our model shows that it has the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat in its upcoming release:

Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) has an Earnings ESP of +1.73% and a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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