Adapt ability

Ciena India
In 2021, Ciena clinched good new wins in India due to the telecom operators replacing Huawei equipment from their networks.

“Telecom operators are actively replacing Huawei networks in India,” said Gary Smith, chief executive officer at Ciena. Smith said that Ciena has seen this dynamic for a while, and that it is clearly a multi-year tailwind for Ciena. “We have good order flow and good new wins in India, some of which are on the back of that. It will take a little while for the company to deploy its orders,” he added.

Earlier in the second-quarter earnings call in June, the manufacturer said it had continued to navigate through COVID challenges in India, with the company recording 48 percent year-on-year (YoY) and 26 percent year-to-Q3 2021 revenue growth in India.

Meanwhile, James Moylan, chief financial officer at Ciena, had said “there are opportunities” for the company in India. “We said earlier that India is a place which has moved very aggressively to exclude Huawei from their builds, there are opportunities for us. We have taken advantage of those opportunities. It has to be noted that the telecom department introduced multiple policy changes post the clashes between Chinese and Indian troops in June 2020, with the changes limiting the involvement of Chinese vendors.

Our company expected that India would start to show in its revenue stack a little higher as compared to its previous quarters. That has been the case; it’s not quite 5 percent of our revenue, but it’s up very nicely year-to-date. It’s (India) going to be a great place for us to be for a long time,” added Moylan.

In late June 2021, Ciena had announced that Bharti Airtel deaployed its photonic infrastructure designs to almost triple its optic fiber network capacity for delivering a world-class 5G experience to its users. The solutions from Ciena will enable Airtel to fast-track 5G and support high-growth cloud applications while lowering the cost per bit.

Ciena Corporation
For fiscal year 2021, November 2020–October 2021, Ciena Corporation reported revenue of USD 3.62 billion, as compared to USD 3.53 billion for the fiscal year 2020.

Ciena’s GAAP net income was USD 500.2 million, or USD 3.19 per diluted common share, as compared to GAAP net income of USD 361.3 million, or USD 2.32 per diluted common share, for fiscal year 2020. And, adjusted (non-GAAP) net income was USD 456.5 million, or USD 2.91 per diluted common share, as compared to adjusted (non-GAAP) net income of USD 460.1 million, or USD 2.95 per diluted common share for fiscal year 2020.

On December 1, 2021, Ciena’s Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of up to USD 1.0 billion of the company’s stock, replacing the previous share repurchase authorization. In connection with this new authorization, the company intends to enter into an accelerated share repurchase (ASR) arrangement under which it will repurchase USD 250 million of its common stock. The final settlement of the ASR is expected to be completed in the second quarter of fiscal 2022.