Computer network equipment maker Juniper Networks Inc. delivered strong fourth-quarter financial results today with both profits and sales that beat Wall Street’s expectations.

The company reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of 55 cents per share on revenue of $1.22 billion, up 1% from the same period a year ago. Analysts had Juniper down for a profit of 53 cents per share on revenue of $1.19 billion.

Juniper Chief Executive Rami Rahim (pictured) said the company benefited from better-than-expected demand for its network infrastructure and security products during the quarter. He added that the company ended the year on a high note thanks to a second successive quarter of year-on-year revenue growth.

“Despite the various challenges presented by the pandemic, we achieved many of the objectives we laid out earlier in the year, which included growing our enterprise business for a fourth consecutive year, growing our cloud business for a second consecutive year and stabilizing our service provider business,” Rahim said. “We believe these outcomes are a direct result of the strategic actions we have taken, which should position us for sustainable full-year revenue growth starting this year.”

Rahim’s comments were positive, but it seems that investors may still be upset that Juniper hasn’t done as well as some other companies in the technology business. Most other technology firms have seen their stocks boom amid a jump in sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Juniper’s share price has stayed relatively flat over the last 12 months.

Moreover, its stock fell by a couple of percentage points in after-hours trading today, possibly because of guidance for the next quarter that fell short of Wall Street’s forecasts.

Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research Inc., told SiliconANGLE that Juniper’s flat performance this year is somewhat surprising because the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a big jump in overall network traffic across the globe

“For some reason Juniper cannot participate in this,” Mueller said. “Its revenue segments are almost the same year-over-year across the data center, service provider and enterprise segments. While that shows the management has done a good job of protecting revenues, it also means that it can’t find any avenues to new growth. Most worrisome is that Juniper’s business in America shrank, offset by growth in EMEA and Asia.”

For its fiscal first quarter, Juniper said, it expects a profit of between 20 and 30 cents per share on revenue of between $1.005 billion and $1.006 billion. Wall Street is modeling a profit of 25 cents per share on revenue of $1.03 billion.

“With its guidance basically flat, Juniper will need to find ways to grow in the networking market again, most likely in the data center segment,” Mueller said.

Photo: SiliconANGLE