Ciena takes a wider loss and sees flat sales ahead

Reflective of many of the past quarters for Ciena Corp., the company today revealed that it had a larger-than-expected second-quarter loss and believes sales will continue to be flat to down in the coming quarters. As an additional blow to the company, it also revealed sales in the current quarter may be down.

“We are carriers in terms of the need for more capacity? We are seeing a phase of moving equipment around [to get the needed capacity],” said Gary Smith, president and CEO of Ciena. Smith noted that early next year is his best guess for when service providers would have to purchase more equipment to suffice capacity needs.

Ciena’s reported net loss for the period was $612.2 million, or $1.86 per share. Those numbers contrast to the one-year ago period, which consisted of a $50.7 million net loss, or $0.17 per share. The company took restructuring charges of $121.4 million and other charges such as $223.2 million in excess inventory charges. Excluding the one-time charges, the loss in the quarter of $208 million, or $0.63 per share, is far off from the $0.21 per share loss Thompson First Call had expected after Ciena issued its revised guidance back in February.

As a bit of good news for the company, Smith noted that Ciena has new business from an international provider, although he wouldn’t reveal the company’s identity. That win involves the deployment of Ciena’s CoreDirector.

At midday, shares of Ciena were down $0.41 to $6.02.