Network infrastructure company Juniper Networks Inc. today posted its fourth-quarter financial results that met Wall Street’s profit targets and just beat expectations on revenue. But that wasn’t good enough for investors.

The company reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of 58 cents per share on revenue of $1.21 billion, up 2.3% from a year ago. Wall Street analysts had earlier forecast 58-cent profit on revenue of $1.19 billion.

Juniper’s net income for the quarter came to $168.4 million, down from $192.2 million in the same period a year ago. Executives said the shortfall was the result of operating expenses rising by 5.1% from the year before.

Juniper also announced its full-year results, posting a profit of 99 cents per share on revenue of $4.45 billion for the 12-month period.

Although Juniper’s results were in line with its targets, the company’s investors were apparently hoping for something better, as its stock was down 2.5% in after-hours trading.

They also might have been disappointed in its outlook. For the first quarter, Juniper executives said they’re expecting earnings in the region of 24 to 30 cents per share on revenue of $1 billion to $1.06 billion. Analysts had forecast revenue of $1.03 billion.

Still, Juniper Chief Executive Rami Rahim put on a brave face, highlighting some “encouraging trends” across the company’s various businesses, which included record enterprise sales and double-digit growth with its cloud-based products.

“We believe we are executing well and positioned to sustainably grow the business starting this year,” Rahim said.

During the fourth quarter, Juniper’s subsidiary Mist Systems announced a key product launch, what it said is the industry’s first “AI-Driven Self-Driving Network” for companies that want to set up a cloud-based network with minimal troubleshooting required. Meanwhile, Juniper itself launched a new tool called Contrail Insights that customers can use to add network, server and workload monitoring and analytics capabilities to their private cloud data center operations.

Photo: Juniper Networks