Juniper meets lowered guidance

Saying that the current economic environment has not shown improvement, Juniper Networks reported first-quarter revenues and earnings in line with guidance it lowered at the end of March.

For the quarter ending March 31, the company posted net revenue of $122.2 million, down from $332.1 million for the same quarter last year and $151 million sequentially. Pro forma net income was $423,000, or zero cents per share.

Actual net loss for the quarter was $46 million, or 14 cents per share, compared with net income of $58.6 million, or 17 cents per share from the first quarter 2001.

For the second quarter, the company predicted that revenue would be flat with the first quarter. Extending into the second half of the year, the company said visibility was too low to make an accurate forecast.

“One of reasons our guidance only extends to the end of first half is that most of the service providers are operating on pretty strict six-month budget cycles,” said Scott Kriens, Juniper’s CEO. “That’s a little different in the way they’ve been operating in past years, where they would always do a six-month check, but it was on a one-year plan. Now we’re seeing that in many of these cases there is not a second-half budget. There’s a six-month budget and a plan to sit down and set a budget for the second half.”