Computer networking infrastructure firm Juniper Networks Inc. beat expectations with its fourth-quarter results today, sending its stock higher in after-hours trading.

The company reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of 56 cents per share, well up from a year ago when it delivered a profit of a penny per share. Juniper’s net profit for the quarter came to $132.9 million, while its revenue hit $1.3 billion, up 6% from a year ago.

Wall Street had forecast earnings of 53 cents per share on sales of $1.27 billion.

Juniper Chief Executive Rami Rahim (pictured) said the company saw better-than-expected demand during the December quarter, leading to strong growth across all vertical industries, customer solutions and geographies.

“Our commitment to delivering products that simplify operations and deliver a superior end-user experience, what we call experience-first networking, is resonating with our customers and allowing us to capitalize on several large and growing markets,” Rahim said in a statement. “We believe this focus, along with the investments we’ve made in our go-to-market organization, will enable us to accelerate our growth in 2022.”

The company also announced its full fiscal 2021 results, saying it reaped an annual profit of $25.7 million, or 76 cents per share, on revenue of $4.74 billion.

Juniper sells computer networking hardware such as routers and Etherenet switches. It’s also a leader in the network software business and offers many security tools as well.

Juniper’s shift toward “experience-first networking” is aimed at helping enterprise customers simplify the deployment and management of their networks by automating those tasks. Much of that innovation is software-based. Earlier this month, for example, it announced an expanded router portfolio powered by new software that makes those devices easier to manage.

Looking to the first quarter of its fiscal 2022 year, Juniper believes it will get off to a good start, with its guidance calling for a 31-cent-per-share profit on revenue of $1.15 billion, just ahead of Wall Street’s estimate of $1.13 billion.

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