Bank of America Upgrades Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) to Buy

Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) was upgraded by analysts at Bank of America from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note issued on Friday, Marketbeat.com reports. The brokerage currently has a $95.00 target price on the communications equipment provider’s stock, up from their prior target price of $70.00. Bank of America‘s price target would indicate a potential upside of 5.88% from the stock’s previous close.

CIEN has been the subject of several other reports. Evercore ISI downgraded Ciena from an “outperform” rating to an “in-line” rating and set a $65.00 price objective for the company. in a research note on Tuesday, October 15th. Barclays raised their price target on Ciena from $55.00 to $67.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, September 5th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered shares of Ciena from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $65.00 price objective on the stock. in a research report on Monday, October 7th. Citigroup lifted their target price on shares of Ciena from $68.00 to $84.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, December 5th. Finally, Morgan Stanley lowered shares of Ciena from an “overweight” rating to an “equal weight” rating and set a $63.00 price target on the stock. in a research report on Monday, October 28th. Seven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $77.00.

Ciena Stock Up 6.2 %

Ciena stock opened at $89.72 on Friday. The stock’s 50 day moving average price is $68.91 and its 200 day moving average price is $57.86. The company has a market cap of $12.96 billion, a PE ratio of 157.40, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 5.95 and a beta of 0.95. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53, a current ratio of 4.06 and a quick ratio of 2.99. Ciena has a 1-year low of $42.20 and a 1-year high of $91.25.

Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, December 12th. The communications equipment provider reported $0.54 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.66 by ($0.12). Ciena had a net margin of 3.44% and a return on equity of 5.98%. The company had revenue of $1.12 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.10 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $0.56 EPS. The business’s revenue for the quarter was down .5% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Ciena will post 1.13 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Ciena announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a share repurchase program on Wednesday, October 2nd that allows the company to repurchase $1.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization allows the communications equipment provider to purchase up to 10.5% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are often an indication that the company’s management believes its shares are undervalued.

Insider Buying and Selling at Ciena

In other news, SVP Joseph Cumello sold 1,289 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Friday, November 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $68.99, for a total transaction of $88,928.11. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now directly owns 39,486 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,724,139.14. The trade was a 3.16 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, SVP David M. Rothenstein sold 3,500 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, September 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $56.24, for a total value of $196,840.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 205,421 shares in the company, valued at $11,552,877.04. This trade represents a 1.68 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 10,489 shares of company stock worth $657,051 in the last 90 days. 0.83% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Trading of Ciena

A number of institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of CIEN. FMR LLC boosted its position in Ciena by 0.5% during the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 21,664,066 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $1,334,290,000 after purchasing an additional 108,407 shares during the period. Barrow Hanley Mewhinney & Strauss LLC boosted its position in shares of Ciena by 119.9% in the second quarter. Barrow Hanley Mewhinney & Strauss LLC now owns 5,397,560 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $260,054,000 after buying an additional 2,943,146 shares during the period. State Street Corp grew its stake in shares of Ciena by 1.2% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 4,439,478 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $273,427,000 after buying an additional 53,078 shares in the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its position in Ciena by 24.0% during the 2nd quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 2,706,308 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $130,392,000 after acquiring an additional 523,313 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in Ciena by 1.4% in the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 2,408,014 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $148,348,000 after acquiring an additional 33,074 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 91.99% of the company’s stock.

About Ciena

Ciena Corporation provides hardware and software services for delivery of video, data, and voice traffic metro, aggregation, and access communications network worldwide. The company’s Networking Platforms segment offers convergence of coherent optical transport, open optical networking, optical transport network switching, IP routing, and switching services.