UPDATED 20:19 EDT / AUGUST 01 2019

CLOUD

Arista Networks beats earnings target but shares sag

Updated:

Shares in cloud networking company Arista Networks Inc. fell slightly in after-hours trading despite solid second-quarter financial results that beat expectations.

The company reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of $2.44 per share on revenue of $608.3 million. That was well up from the $519.8 million revenue it reported in the same quarter one year ago. The company also reported net income of $189.3 million, reversing a $155.2 million loss a year ago.

The results easily beat Wall Street’s forecast of earnings of $2.22 per share on revenue of $695.6 million.

Although the numbers were solid, the good news was tempered somewhat by a few words of warning from Arista Chief Financial Officer Ita Brennan, who said in a conference call that the company saw some softness in demand from its cloud customers in the last quarter.

“While early indications are for improved demand for these customers in the September period, we believe that second half growth in this business will remain somewhat muted as compared to prior years,” Brennan said.

For the current quarter, Arista said it expects revenue of between $647 million and $657 million. Wall Street is forecasting third quarter revenue of $650.8 million, just below the midpoint of Arista’s guidance. Still, investors seem to be erring on the side of caution given Brennan’s words, as Arista’s stock was down 3% in after-hours trading. Update: Shares came in for more of a beating Friday, closing down more than 10% on another down day for overall markets.

Arista made its name as a maker of networking hardware such as Ethernet switches and routers. In recent years, the company has tried to position itself as more of a “cloud networking” provider that sells not just hardware but also the software needed to keep highly scalable networks up and running. Key to that is its CloudVision network management software, which is a single network control point that manages the entire base of Arista switches in a data center automatically.

Kenneth Duda, Arista’s chief technology officer and senior vice president of software engineering, discussed how CloudVision can improve network resiliency during an interview on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, in April:

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