Ciena (CIEN) Gains But Lags Market: What You Should Know

Ciena (CIEN) closed the most recent trading day at $60.55, moving +0.63% from the previous trading session. The stock lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 1.4%. At the same time, the Dow added 1.05%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 2.13%.

Heading into today, shares of the developer of high-speed networking technology had gained 13.59% over the past month, outpacing the Computer and Technology sector's gain of 1.93% and the S&P 500's gain of 4.78% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from CIEN as it approaches its next earnings report date. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.83, up 16.9% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $971.70 million, up 1.15% from the prior-year quarter.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $2.92 per share and revenue of $3.69 billion, which would represent changes of +38.39% and +3.43%, respectively, from the prior year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for CIEN should also be noted by investors. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.

Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. CIEN currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Looking at its valuation, CIEN is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 20.62. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 20.62, so we one might conclude that CIEN is trading at a no noticeable deviation comparatively.

We can also see that CIEN currently has a PEG ratio of 1.29. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. Fiber Optics stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 1.29 based on yesterday's closing prices.

The Fiber Optics industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 124, putting it in the top 49% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.


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