Broadband boosts Ciena revenue

Ciena reported better-than-expected revenue growth in its second fiscal quarter (ending April 30), attributing the results largely to sales of its broadband DSL and core switching and transport products.

“The realities of the operational and economic issues around IPTV, which is somewhat unproven, is causing RBOCs to focus on some of the weapons they have right now, which is clearly DSL,” said Ciena chief executive Gary Smith. “You’re beginning to see that in some of the announcements being made. That is the product they can ship out the door now and have a good handle on it.”

Ciena’s overall revenue increased 9.6% sequentially and 39% from a year earlier to nearly $104 million. And revenue in the third quarter will rise 5% sequentially to be up about 44% from a year earlier, Ciena predicted. Its net loss was $74.8 million, or 13 cents a share, down slightly from $76.2 million, or 16 cents a share, a year earlier.

Though the company increased its cash burn in the quarter, an $11.7 million payment from Broadwing--the first of three annual installments from a settlement reached in April of a patent infringement lawsuit--allowed Ciena to report a more than 15% sequential decrease in quarterly cash burn to $36.6 million and a cash and investment balance of $1.19 billion.

The drivers of Ciena’s second-quarter sales were different from those in the previous quarter, Smith said, and the biggest factors in the coming quarter are likely to be different again--metro networking first, DSL second.

“There is no one thing that will make a difference, no single customer or product that will drive growth,” Smith said. “It’s the combination of the efforts we’ve had for some time that are coming together to drive overall improvement.”

Four customers (three of which are within the U.S., the other a non-PTT international client) contributed nearly half of Ciena’s revenue for the quarter, each of them contributing at least 10% of total sales. In the previous quarter, two customers contributed nearly a third of Ciena’s revenue.

Smith also announced the departure of Ciena’s senior vice president and chief strategy officer Steve Chaddick, who has been with Ciena since its inception. Chaddick has accepted a position with Georgia Tech, where he already serves on an advisory board and will focus on economic development in the area. He will assume a consulting role with Ciena, Smith said.

Ciena is currently working to establish a facility in India as part of its efforts to lower operating costs. The company lowered its headcount by 52 in the first quarter, leaving it with 1616 employees.

The company also announced a new “regional” version of its long-haul CoreStream Agility dense wavelength-division multiplexing platform to accommodate metro and regional networks with shorter distances, an application with particular demand in Europe, Ciena said.