Transcript: Ciena Corp (CIEN) Q3 2026 Earnings Call

And as AI continues to drive up the data rates and bandwidth requirements inside the data center, new optical technologies and applications are required to provide the needed improvements in capacity and density for short reach, low power connections.

Given the acceleration and projected increase in the compounding waves of spend on network infrastructure across these markets, we continue to believe that the total addressable market for our business will effectively double over the next three years, growing from approximately $25 billion today to approximately $50 billion by 2029. Moreover, given our growing competitive advantages, we expect our share of that TAM to continue to increase over that timeframe. More specifically, long established technology leadership in optical networking positions us to capture a growing share of wallet as optical connectivity expands its role throughout the WAN and inside the data center.

Product Portfolio and Customer Adoption

Across generations of coherent technology, Ciena’s first to market benchmarks have set the bar for the industry and continue to do so. Ciena was the first to commercialize coherent optics decades ago, and we continue to lead the industry in optical innovation backed by very focused R&D, deep expertise, and proven deployment at scale. Moving forward, performance gains will increasingly depend on precisely these capabilities. Because of our leadership position and value proposition, we’ve developed a high degree of competitive differentiation across our portfolio, with the clearest proof being the customer adoption that we’re seeing across our portfolio in each of the primary market segments. So starting with both the traditional WAN market as I outlined and the AI WAN.

Today’s market dynamics are driving higher adoption rates for our WaveLogic 6 Extreme platform, which after eighteen months is still the only 1.6 terabit high performance modem on the market today. Notably, its ramp has already exceeded that of our prior generation WaveLogic 5E. Separately, customer adoption and scaling of our intelligent line systems remains exceptionally strong. RLS is basically the industry standard in disaggregated optical line systems, where Ciena’s first mover advantage has driven a leading installed base where roughly we have 70% market share. In addition to serving cloud providers and service providers in the network backbone and cloud providers for DCI in the AI WAN, RLS is the industry’s first system deployed for scale across applications.

And the next generation of RLS, RLS Hyper-Rail, is our second generation of RLS and represents our sixth generation of photonic line systems leadership. Co-created with the hyperscalers, it dramatically increases the density of existing optical amplifier infrastructure and as such is purpose built to address the needs to distribute AI training workloads in data centers across greater distances. With customer orders ramping, we remain on track for initial customer standardization for RLS Hyper-Rail by the end of 2026 and scaling to material revenue as we move throughout 2027.

Turning to our interconnects portfolio, we’re applying our optical leadership to a growing portfolio of connectivity solutions that address surging bandwidth demands inside and around the data center and the performance limitations of today’s short reach technologies. Starting with our WaveLogic 5 Nano pluggable optics, we are seeing strong market adoption as we continue to ramp into production volume.

In fact, in Q3, we shipped more than twice the volume of 800ZR plugs than in the previous quarter. In addition, during the quarter, we made strong progress with the components portion of our interconnects portfolio. We are seeing strong market receptivity to Nitro, our linear redriver for active copper cable solutions. And I’m pleased to report that we received sample orders from several anchor customers in the ecosystem for Vesta, our open co-packaged optical or CPO solution. This represents another important step towards the commercialization of our open ecosystem approach towards short reach data center optics.

And we believe this is gaining meaningful industry momentum, most importantly with potential customers. As any new growth sector, our CPO business will continue to strengthen over time with revenue expected to begin in 2027 and ramping into 2028. And finally, it’s worth noting that last quarter we announced a significant win with a major hyperscaler that integrates our WaveLogic 6E coherent technology into their own platform. This solution goes well beyond the modem and combines our DSP, drivers, TIAs, and coherent expertise into a complete module that will be deployed broadly across the customer’s global optical network via their own optical platform. I think this win demonstrates our ability to deliver for our customers across multiple consumption models with our best in class portfolio, and this represents a significant takeaway from a component competitor.

Outlook

At the highest level, the current and future waves of AI driven demands on bandwidth and network traffic will require industry leading high speed optical connectivity. We remain focused on managing the business with this long term view, supported by durable demand, a broad set of co-creation opportunities and customer design wins, robust orders, and a backlog that extends well into fiscal 2028. Looking forward, the strength of our market position and the breadth of our portfolio provide us with growing confidence and visibility into a multi-year runway of growth, operating leverage and increasing profitability. As a result, and to add to this level of confidence, we recently secured a significant increase in customer commitments that extend through 2029. At the same time, as Marc will discuss in a few moments, we’ve also secured incremental supply capacity for critical optical components to service that multi-year demand.

So in summary, Ciena’s unmatched combination of leading optical technologies, incumbency, portfolio breadth, and deep expertise across systems, components, software, and services gives us a powerful and sustainable competitive advantage. And really as the only pure play optical systems and interconnects vendor operating at scale, we are uniquely positioned to convert AI driven demand into durable top line growth with increasing operating leverage and earnings power over multiple years, delivering differentiated value for our customers and our shareholders. With that, I’ll hand the call over to Marc for an update on our financials and our outlook.

CFO Financial Update

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: Thank you, Gary, and good morning everyone. As Gary just discussed, our focus is on delivering strong financial performance while ensuring security of supply and manufacturing capacity necessary to support the significant multiyear demand in front of us.

Within that context, we continue to make excellent progress against our three financial priorities. First, let me discuss our progress on gross margin. We achieved 46.4% adjusted gross margin this quarter, which was positively impacted by the treatment of tariff refunds by about 70 basis points. Even without the tariff impact, gross margin achieved the top end of guidance, reflecting disciplined cost execution, favorable mix and pricing discipline. Our midterm goal was to structurally position the company to achieve mid-40s gross margins.

With our results over the past several quarters, we are confident that we have reset our margin baseline to this mid-40s goal. But as we’ve said over the past year, the mid-40s goal was a waypoint, not the final destination. We have the cost structure and leadership portfolio to expand gross margins further over the next few years. Second, as we balance the investments to support the growth of our business, working capital remains a focus. While our cash conversion has taken a step back quarter on quarter, the overall trend is positive relative to the year ago results.

We’ve invested working capital to support slightly higher inventory levels and to increase revenue through the quarter. Even with these investments, we’ve generated $116 million in free cash flow. Third is capital allocation. We continue to take meaningful steps to improve the operational and financial efficiency of the business. Our June convertible debt issuance achieved two specific goals.

First, it lowered our cost of capital with a five year zero coupon instrument at an economic conversion premium of 114%, from which we retired our 5.5% interest term loan. Second, it provided the capital to help secure supply over the next three years. We maintain strategic flexibility as a result and have $2.8 billion in cash and equivalents at the end of Q3. Our capital investments this year have increased capacity sufficient to support RLS, plug and Waveserver revenue growth all over 60% year to date. Additionally, we continue to return capital to our shareholders in Q3.

We repurchased 356,000 shares for an aggregate price of $172 million, reflecting the acceleration associated with the convert deal. Lastly, we expect to be on the high end of our capital expenditure range of $250 million to $275 million.

Quarterly Results

Now let’s move to the quarterly results in more detail. As Gary noted in his opening remarks, revenue achieved $1.67 billion, at the top end of our guidance, an increase of 37% year on year and another quarterly record. Our total combined optical networks revenue, including interconnects, grew over 45% year on year, supported by over 55% growth for both our RLS and Waveserver systems. Our interconnects more than doubled year on year, while our direct cloud provider revenue grew over 80%.

Our in and around the data center percent of revenue has quadrupled year to date, well ahead of our committed 3x growth from the beginning of the year. We had two customers that each contributed more than 10% of revenue. And lastly, we exited Q3 with an $800 million increase in backlog to $8.5 billion. Orders continue to accelerate, as Gary noted. One month into the quarter, we have booked nearly as much demand as all of Q3 and expect to end the year with more than $10 billion in backlog. As I noted earlier, adjusted gross margin was 46.4%, exceeding the top end of our guidance by 90 basis points and up 450 basis points year on year.

Q3 adjusted operating expense was $400 million, coming in at the low end of our guide and driving a record adjusted operating margin of 22.5%, 250 basis points over our guide and more than doubling the year ago result. Adjusted EPS reached $2.11, more than triple the year ago figure and achieving a new record level for the company.

Q4 and Full Year Guidance

Now let’s move to guidance for the last quarter of the year. In Q4 2026, we expect to deliver revenue of $1.75 billion, plus or minus $50 million, raising the full year midpoint to $6.42 billion, up $120 million from last quarter. With this revenue guide, we expect to increase our market share in the combined optical systems and plug market by about four points to approximately 30%.

We expect adjusted gross margins of 45%, plus or minus 50 basis points, bringing the year to a similar range, a raise of 50 basis points from last quarter. Adjusted operating expense will be roughly $415 million, plus or minus $10 million, with our annual OpEx at $1.6 billion, slightly down from the June guide. All told, we expect to drive an adjusted operating margin of approximately 20%, plus or minus 50 basis points, bringing the full year to between 20% and 21%, exceeding the 20% annual figure for the first time in the company’s history.

Supply Security

Now let me address the topic of supply more closely. Gary described an unprecedented durable demand environment with backlog now into 2028.

To ensure our ability to service this demand, we’ve taken decisive steps to strengthen our supply security and to increase our output. In recent weeks, we finalized long term agreements supply of certain key components through 2029, including incremental capacity for those key components that will enable us to support growing customer demand. This extends the investments we’ve made for this year to drive 35% revenue growth. We continue to invest upstream to drive security of supply to meet and eventually bring into balance the demand backlog. As a result, we expect to see a reduction in cash from operations in Q4 as investments are dispersed to support these agreements.

At the same time, we continue to make progress in the value exchange discussions with our customers. In addition to price discussions, these conversations are increasingly focused on the alignment of various demand terms and conditions with the capacity required to support them.

Preliminary Fiscal 2027 Outlook

With this ongoing momentum and improved visibility into future demand, we believe it’s prudent to provide early direction for fiscal 2027. As we see it today, we expect to deliver another record year with revenue growing a minimum of 30% year on year, yielding at least $8.3 billion to $8.4 billion in revenue, with supply driven upsides. Our investments in capacity and supply allow us to accelerate absolute revenue growth from 25% to 26% and now into 27%.

At these levels, we expect to again increase our market share in optical systems and plugs in fiscal 2027. We expect gross margins to be at least between 45% to 46%. And we expect to achieve fiscal 2027 adjusted operating margin between 25% to 27%, posting yet another record in profitability and serving as yet another proof point for the earnings potential of Ciena’s model. Again, this is our preliminary view of 2027, and we’ll provide an update when we report our Q4 results in December. In the interim, we look forward to continuing the dialogue in a few weeks’ time in Ottawa at our Investor Forum, the content from which will be posted on our investor website afterwards.

Closeout, Q3 was a testament to the strength of Ciena’s technology leadership, customer engagements and supply resiliency in the face of unprecedented multiyear demand. The execution of our business model has driven an acceleration of our earnings in Q3, in 2026, and we now believe into 2027 and beyond. With that, operator, we’ll now take questions from our sell side analysts.

Question and Answer Session

OPERATOR: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again.

Your first question comes from the line of George Notter with Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

ANALYST: GEORGE NOTTER – WOLFE RESEARCH: Hi, guys. Thanks very much for the question. I guess congrats on the terrific results here. I guess I wanted to start just by, you mentioned value exchange on the call.

Certainly, I think you mentioned prices as well as alignment of demand terms and conditions. Could you just talk a little bit more about what’s going on there? Any sense for what price increases might look like? Any sense for what terms and conditions might be looking like in terms of the context of value exchange? Thanks.

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: Yeah. Hey, George, it’s Marc. Thanks for the question. I’ll take it kind of in two parts. On the pricing piece, we’ve had conversations with customers across different product lines.

And we’ve gotten to a space where we would expect, depending on the customer and the product line, anywhere between, call it, high single digits types of price increases to something in the range of high teens, low 20s type of price increases. And what’s remarkable, and I think you’ll appreciate this, George, is some of that will selectively hit backlog, right? So I think we’ve made really good progress there. The second pillar in terms of conditions is really a two way discussion. The first is we’re on the hook to make sure that we deliver what we say we’re going to deliver, but we expect the reciprocity of that from the customer side as well.

And so we’ve covered those aspects. We’ve talked a little bit about payment terms. We’ve talked a little bit about fill rates and things like that. So we’re trying to make it a pretty holistic conversation in terms of that value exchange and not just have a conversation about price. Because just like we’re looking for supply security, our customers are looking for supply security from us as well.

And it’s something that we feel pretty confident that with these supply agreements that we can fulfill.

ANALYST: GEORGE NOTTER – WOLFE RESEARCH: Got it. Super. And then, I know that there were some price increases, I think, earlier in the year last year, just around tariffs. Is that something that’s flowing into the model now?

I know that in the past, you guys were not repricing backlog certainly. But is that something that’s helping the gross margin now? Any sense there? Thanks.

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: Yes. This is Marc again, George. It’s relatively neutral. We’re not putting margin on top of tariffs, right? If we get $10 of tariffs, we kind of pass on that $10 of tariffs. What we saw in Q3 was kind of a onetime accounting adjustment for those tariff refunds that we don’t expect to continue moving forward, and that gave us about 70 basis points of uplift.

But moving forward, I would say the tariff impact, again, under today’s current regime, is relatively neutral. We’re monitoring pretty closely some of the impacts that are coming out of the new Canadian tariff regime. That could have an impact of, call it, $10 million ish a quarter. But again, we’re still trying to work through the mitigation actions that we’ve got associated with that.

ANALYST: GEORGE NOTTER – WOLFE RESEARCH: Super. I’ll pass it on. Thanks a lot, guys.

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: Thanks, George.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from the line of Tal Liani with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

ANALYST: TAL LIANI – BANK OF AMERICA: Hello, good morning. Gary, if I told you three years ago that you’re going to grow 30%, can you hear me?

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Yes, I can hear you loud and clear.

ANALYST: TAL LIANI – BANK OF AMERICA: Perfect. If I told you three years ago you’re going to grow 30% with 26% margin, you would have asked to drink the same thing I’m drinking. So the question I have is about backlog. So your backlog is doubling this year, and it grows even faster than revenues. Your revenues are growing fast, it grows even faster than revenues. I’m trying to understand the early ordering portion of the backlog, maybe customers are buying ahead just because of supply constraints.

It’s not a concern. I just want to understand, kind of get an understanding of how backlog could behave in 2027. That’s the reason for my question.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Okay. I think it’s almost entirely just driven by a function of lead times.

The demand is absolutely there. And just to sort of illustrate that, Marc gave an early indication of what we think our guidance is for the year as just an early directional indication for next year. It would be greater than that if supply was greater. I mean that sort of, I think, summarizes it. We’ve got, we think, at least a $10 billion backlog as we leave this year.

And at the midpoint of what Marc was talking about, you’re looking at revenues of $8.3 billion to $8.4 billion as sort of baseline for us for next year. It would be greater than that if we had more supply. And so the demand is absolutely there. You look at our installation services, they’re up 35% for the year. And as soon as we can ship it, it’s installed and carrying traffic.

SCOTT MCFEELY, EXECUTIVE ADVISOR, CIENA: Hey, Tal, maybe I’ll just add a little bit more context here. If you look back all the way to 2024, our orders, call that demand, doubled from ’24 to ’25. From ’25 to ’26, we’re expecting another 50% increase. And as you rightly noted, backlog is doubling across all three of those years. From ’24 to ’25 was a double, from ’25 to ’26 is a double. And so what we’re really constrained with is the industry needs to add a significant amount of capacity to keep up with that demand.

And so we think it’s going to be a multiyear journey before we see that supply and demand get back into balance. And multiyear, so we don’t see that happening before ’28 at all. And so I think you’ll see a very similar constrained dynamic going into ’27, and likely into ’28.

ANALYST: TAL LIANI – BANK OF AMERICA: Got it. And if I can just ask a follow-up, any color on customer composition, meaning hyperscalers, I understand.

What about smaller hyperscalers? Meaning, new clouds and new hyperscalers like Oracle. So without names of customers, but can you discuss your ability to grow customer list over time and where is the demand?

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Yes. About 50% of our business is now hyperscalers directly.

But increasingly, I think to your point, we’re seeing this sort of neoscalers, umbrella of neoscalers, which covers a multitude of different business models, etcetera. We are very focused on that space. They are leaning very much into networking now and they are securing networks on MOFN deals. They’re beginning to put their own fiber in when they can get it. And we are taking more than our fair share of that market as it grows.

So we are very focused on addressing that market both in the U.S. and globally. We’re seeing that in certain parts of the world where these neoscalers are investing in the networking. So I think as we go through 2027 and 2028 that will become an increasingly important part of our business.

ANALYST: TAL LIANI – BANK OF AMERICA: Got it. Thank you.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Thanks, Tal.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from the line of Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

ANALYST: META MARSHALL – MORGAN STANLEY: Great. Thanks. A couple of questions. Maybe just following up on George’s question.

Just in terms of some of these newer arrangements that you guys are having with, or discussions that you’re having with customers, are some of those pricing adjustments dependent on timeline of delivery, like, in terms of, if you can deliver six months earlier, you can capture high single digits versus a mid single digit price adjustment. Just trying to get a sense of whether there’s any kind of escalators in there. And then second question, just as you guys look to assure more supply, have you qualified additional suppliers at this point? Or is this largely reaching long term agreements with existing suppliers? Thanks.

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: Yes. Thanks, Meta. It’s Marc. So on your first question in terms of escalators, we really haven’t built those in. The price increases that we’ve talked about aren’t necessarily performance based per se.

They will cut in as more and more backlog from those orders becomes a bigger part of our revenue. So I wouldn’t say that it’s performance related. Once we agree to those price increases, it’s really around when we deliver it, they’ll pay for it. In terms of qualifying new suppliers, yes, that is part of our supply resiliency strategy that we’re driving. We’ve got our typical providers that are in the stable that you know very well, but we are looking at expanding both the types and the numbers of suppliers that we have as well as we’re constantly looking at new technologies to satisfy the same type of functionality.

So we’re taking both a quantity as well as a technology perspective to our supply chain.

ANALYST: META MARSHALL – MORGAN STANLEY: Great. Thanks.

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Cardoso with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

ANALYST: JOSEPH CARDOSO – JPMORGAN: Hi. Good morning. And I’ll share my congrats as well on the results and guidance here.

And thanks for the question. Maybe another backlog question and more on the composition of it. As we think about the portfolio offerings that you guys have and maybe the raw irons in the fire that you guys are trying to address, where are you seeing this strong demand inflection as we’re entering the back half of the fiscal year here? And as a second part to that, it’s great to hear that you’re seeing visibility now into ’28. But any color you can provide on the weighting of orders coming in for ’27 versus ’28?

Essentially just trying to get a better understanding of how much of ’27 is already covered versus what is building for ’28 now? And then I have a follow-up. Thank you.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: So the first part of that question, Joe, is really, we’re seeing broad demand across the portfolio and you’d characterize it as being line systems, both in terms of the existing RLS and Hyper-Rail. We’ve got a number of new wins for Hyper-Rail that we’re beginning to ramp up during 2027.

So there is a lot of infrastructure going in for that. Think scale across, not entirely but predominantly, the deployments for that is what’s driving it. And then on the modem side, we shared some of the statistics that you’re seeing for WaveLogic 6. We doubled output. It’s already at this point exceeding 5E in terms of its adoption.

And I think that again just talks to the need for high speed distance for these kinds of applications. So we’re seeing it on the modem side and of course we’re seeing it on infrastructure of line systems. We’re also seeing that both in terms of MOFN deals globally as well to support this expansion, markets like India and the Middle East and certain parts of Asia where the hyperscalers are leaning into provisioning of extension of their networks. Submarine as well, massive build outs going on across the global submarine market where we have number one market share in the world. So we’re seeing that across it, Joe.

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: And in terms of the profile of the backlog, we’ve got, as you said, probably about $10 billion plus backlog as we go into 2027. We cannot satisfy basically all of the requirements that they would take to deliver all of that in 2027. Joseph, the vast majority of that $10 billion comes with a customer request date that’s actually in 2027, meaning that they would take it if we could give it to them. So to your question, the backlog covers most of the 2027 guide.

ANALYST: JOSEPH CARDOSO – JPMORGAN: Got it. That’s exactly what I was getting at with that. Thanks for the color there.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Thanks, Joe.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from the line of Ruben Roy with Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

ANALYST: RUBEN ROY – STIFEL: Yes, thank you. Gary, for the first question, I wanted to maybe drill into the performance optics discussion and sort of the consumption model compared to the systems model.

Is that a bespoke arrangement with one customer? Are you productizing this consumption model as you go forward? And I guess, as you think about that longer term and how that sits in the interconnect family, could you talk a little bit about the margin structure as that consumption model starts to build? Thank you.

SCOTT MCFEELY, EXECUTIVE ADVISOR, CIENA: Hey, Ruben. It’s Scott. So first of all, I’m going to answer the question from two different angles, or that’s how I heard it anyway. So first of all, the performance modem portfolio, the Extreme family, if you like, WaveLogic 5 and then WaveLogic 6, is obviously a very broadly deployed solution within our systems business. So we have a lot of deployments out there on Extreme Modems. This specific opportunity you’re referring to, though, of taking that and offering it up in a different consumption model, is bespoke relationships with individual customers.

We have two examples of that today. One that was a recent announcement last quarter. It’s certainly something that we don’t shy away from. We’ve made the technology available however our customers want to consume it. But in those examples, those are very, very unique in terms of how those customers want to deploy them.

So they’re kind of custom development for them. And the relationship we have with those customers reflects that.

ANALYST: RUBEN ROY – STIFEL: Okay. Thank you, Scott. And then as a quick follow-up for Marc.

Sorry if I missed this, Marc. But with the 25% to 27% operating margin guidance for ’27, or first look at ’27, that implies, I think, roughly flat to maybe up a little bit operating expenses. If you could just walk us through sort of the mechanics around operating expense as you look out into fiscal 2027, that would be helpful. Thank you.

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: Yes. No problem. We haven’t really closed in yet. We’re kind of in the middle of our annual planning process. But the puts and takes that you should kind of be thinking about is, this year, we’ll spend roughly, call it, $1.6 billion. Keep in mind that $1.6 billion includes a bunch of onetime variable compensation that a year ago, we were telling you it was going to be about $1.5 billion. We’re at $1.6 billion mostly because of that variable comp. We’re going to reinvest that onetime item. So that’s when you say it’s about flat, all the folks sitting around the table here are looking at $100 million more of investment that they get regardless of the performance of the company.

So we are reinvesting those onetime things. And I think you’ll also see there’ll be a little bit more investment in some of the activities, particularly around line systems as we continue to grow that business and invest in our interconnect portfolio.

ANALYST: RUBEN ROY – STIFEL: Great. Thank you, Marc.

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: You bet.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Koontz with Needham & Company. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

ANALYST: RYAN KOONTZ – NEEDHAM & COMPANY: Great. Good morning. Thanks for the question. In light of some of the politics around data center construction and the like, which I know weighs on investor minds a lot and whips a lot of the broader sector around, how do you feel about the pace of catch-up of your WAN projects relative to data center construction? Do you feel like you’ve got visibility independent of pacing of data centers in that light? Maybe you can comment on that, Gary?

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Yes. Listen, it’s a great topical question. I would say that as we talk to the hyperscalers and we talk about durability of demand and their long term view and the rest of it and getting long term agreements with them and commitments. Part of that, one of the comments that was made to me was basically that if they stopped building data centers tomorrow, Gary, you probably wouldn’t notice for two years. Meaning, they’ve already got these data centers out there and they need connectivity and they’re not going to strand the assets.

And secondly, they’ve got data centers that they must increase the network capacity to. And so largely what we’ve gotten backlog here and what we’ve got visibility to going forward is really the data centers that are already there. And particularly you’ve got a lot of international expansion as well. And it’s really the refresh of the GPUs in these data centers that are already there that require massive amounts of additional connectivity. Bear in mind, we have a unique insight into this because we’ve got number one market share in data center connectivity before all of this AI expansion began.

So we have got the connection to most of the data centers around the world. A lot of what we’re seeing is expansion and increasing of that capacity and connectivity to enable the refreshing of the GPUs, etcetera. And you’ve also got all of the inference and agentic stuff in front of us. Ryan, certainly for the next couple of years, we think we’re largely immune from what may or may not happen with the pacing of new data centers.

ANALYST: RYAN KOONTZ – NEEDHAM & COMPANY: That’s great. Thank you for that. And maybe as a follow-up, any commentary on the product mix here as you’ve seen, like in the most recent quarter or maybe recent bookings, in terms of shift of line systems versus pluggables and transponders? Any commentary there?

SCOTT MCFEELY, EXECUTIVE ADVISOR, CIENA: Yes. Maybe I’ll jump in and others can add color, Ryan.

So as I think through what we’ve seen, particularly over the last twelve months, I think we’ve seen our plugs and our line systems, particularly RLS, really grow at much higher than corporate average growth rates. I think I mentioned plugs and RLS together as part of our optical piece growing 45%. So you kind of see how that’s becoming a bigger piece of the pie. One of the things that from a margin perspective that we’re seeing is, as our DCOM solution really starts to increase over the last year, that’s really driven a pretty accretive dynamic for us moving forward. We expect that to continue.

And then obviously, as we add Hyper-Rail, that’s going to be another accretive motion for us. And so I think what you’re seeing is the optical piece of our portfolio really driving a bunch of the growth for the company. And then obviously, we’ve got the DCOM piece, which is shown in route and switch, really in the early part of its ramp as well.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: I think, Ryan, the dynamic has been going on since 2024. We’re just seeing more and more demand for line systems, meaning more fibers are getting lit.

And those are getting lit with coherent optics of all flavors, be it plugs or performance optics consumed in Waveserver. And all those, to Marc’s point, are up well north of the 35% or 37% that we’re reporting as a corporate average. And that’s going to continue, we think, going into the foreseeable future. The DCOM piece is a great adder, but it’s a bit lumpy because of the concentration of the customers. So from quarter to quarter, DCOM will come and go.

But it’s a net new add for us.

ANALYST: RYAN KOONTZ – NEEDHAM & COMPANY: That’s great. Thanks so much.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Thanks, Ryan.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from the line of Tim Long with Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

ANALYST: TIM LONG – BARCLAYS: Thank you. Appreciate it. Two for me as well.

Maybe first, if we could dig a little deeper into Hyper-Rail. You mentioned it a few times here on the value add side and ramp. Just kind of update us on, it sounds like a few customers, but where are we in the demand profile? And how quickly could we see the ramp of this product? And kind of just remind us on the economics versus, like, the more, the RLS, prior generation?

And then the follow-up would be on just the pure telco business, ex MOFN. If you could just talk a little bit about the durability of that business. In the past, that’s been a little bit more cyclical. So just curious of the outlook on just the pure telco piece.

SCOTT MCFEELY, EXECUTIVE ADVISOR, CIENA: Yes. I’ll start on Hyper-Rail, Tim, and then others can jump in. We’re on track for getting that product to standardization by the end of this calendar year, and you’ll see the ramp starting in 2027. And that ramp in 2027 will be to several hundred million dollars, right? So we’re looking at that as a pretty meaningful ramp for us. Back story on that is it could probably be faster if we get more components, right?

Obviously, we’re working day and night on that. From an economics perspective, relative to RLS, I think the team has done a fantastic job of improving the margins over the last four to eight quarters on RLS to get us to a pretty decent margin profile. Hyper-Rail will be a step function on top of that. And with the size of the ramp and the opportunity that we think is coming through with Hyper-Rail and the economics of that, it’s going to be accretive to the company as a whole once we get into 2027, 2028, 2029. So we’re really looking forward to getting Hyper-Rail out there.

And I think our customers are placing quite a few orders that’s represented in that $10 billion of backlog that we expect at the end of the year.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: And on service provider growth, it’s actually quite difficult to separate it from a lot of the MOFN activity that’s going on. And we know the MOFN activity is high. But I’d say there’s two things going on with the service provider piece. One, it is growing anyway because I think there’s been under investment in optical infrastructure in the last five years.

And you’ve got the service providers returning to drive out infrastructure for optical infrastructure. And you’ve also got this MOFN piece. And you’re seeing that phenomenon now certainly in North America. If you go back about eighteen months, it was very much an international phenomenon. But now with training and the rest of it, we’re seeing that very much so in North America.

And that is driving a lot of, particularly, the wholesale market in the U.S. and the wholesale carriers that specialize in that. We’re seeing very strong growth in that space. And we expect that to continue.

Markets like India, particularly for MOFN, we’re seeing explosive growth in provisioning of MOFN networks for multiple hyperscalers in places like India, Japan, I would also highlight, and then certain parts of the Middle East. So we expect to see good steady service provider growth continue over the next few years irrespective of the MOFN phenomenon.

ANALYST: TIM LONG – BARCLAYS: Thank you very much.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from the line of Simon Leopold with Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

ANALYST: JEFF KOCHE – RAYMOND JAMES: Hey. Thanks, guys. Jeff Koche in for Simon.

Really wanted to ask, first question on the software business. It doesn’t really appear like the web scale RLS deployments are the driver here. Is that kind of the right interpretation? Is that because they have their own solutions into that? And, like, how do you win the RLS deals if it’s not like a management platform type play?

Thank you. I have a follow-up.

SCOTT MCFEELY, EXECUTIVE ADVISOR, CIENA: Yeah, Jeff. Scott here. Can you hear us back?

ANALYST: JEFF KOCHE – RAYMOND JAMES: We can hear you. Yes. Thanks.

SCOTT MCFEELY, EXECUTIVE ADVISOR, CIENA: Okay. I mean, your hypothesis that there’s less off-box software components in a web scale deal in general, not just an AI deal, is valid. That’s a fair statement. However, having said that, to your second question, don’t take that comment to mean that the only thing these guys are buying is merchant hardware from us because the value that they get is much broader than that. And whether it’s submarine networks, their existing backbone, their DCI networks, or their scale across networks, the statement is true across the piece.

They’re getting a hardware platform, but some very sophisticated off-box software capabilities that is embedded into their back office system that has an awful lot of intelligence in it — protection mechanisms, etcetera — to allow them to deliver to their SLAs. They’re getting planning tools and deployment tools. They’re getting link engineering tools. They’re getting a global, across the world, service capability to turn these things on, pre-position them, pre-configure them, and turn them on — a set of skills that we’ve developed with them and their relationships for more than a decade now.

So just because we’re not selling as much off-box software components to service providers, don’t conclude, therefore, it’s just a commodity hardware sale. It’s far from that.

ANALYST: JEFF KOCHE – RAYMOND JAMES: Great answer. So maybe just with that in mind, can you maybe give us a little bit of color on how the gross margins are for that business and maybe how they’re changing, just maybe even relative to the average?

SCOTT MCFEELY, EXECUTIVE ADVISOR, CIENA: You’re talking about the software, the off-box software?

ANALYST: JEFF KOCHE – RAYMOND JAMES: No. For the line systems.

SCOTT MCFEELY, EXECUTIVE ADVISOR, CIENA: Yes. So as I said previously with Tim, we’ve seen really good improvements in the RLS gross margins over the last two, three years. And I expect that to continue and those are approaching what I would call the corporate average. As we move into the next generation, Hyper-Rail, the economics get significantly better, right? And so those will be above the current corporate average.

And I would expect, with the size of opportunity that we have with Hyper-Rail over the next couple of years, that that will be accretive.

ANALYST: JEFF KOCHE – RAYMOND JAMES: Terrific. And then if I could just do another follow-up on the interconnect business, and really just inside the data center. We know that Google’s looking to deploy a 2.4 terabit coherent light solution for CPUs.

Maybe talk about, are you in those deals? Are you being evaluated? What’s your take there? And what’s your take on optical circuit switching? Is that a product that Ciena would explore?

Thank you.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Yeah. So a couple of things. There’s a couple of questions there. Coherent moving inside the data center — we said for a long time now that we think that’s a trend that is inevitable, and it’s going to happen, and we’re committed to that.

We absolutely believe in the coherent light market. We think the right intercept for that for the general market is at 3.2 terabits. And we think we’ll be in a great position to be a leader in that market. In terms of OCS, we love OCS because it is part of the continuation of more optics inside the data center. And it will drive actually adoption of coherent inside that data center faster than without OCS in our belief system.

So that’s all good news. That’s a separate answer to whether or not we’re going to jump into the OCS market ourselves. We’re not going to comment on plans or make any product announcements on that on the call today.

OPERATOR: We’re going to move on to one last question. The question comes from the line of Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

ANALYST: TIM SAVAGEAUX – NORTHLAND CAPITAL MARKETS: Hey, good morning, and congrats on the results and especially the guide. That’s kind of the focus of my question, which is, along several lines, the case for accelerating revenue growth in fiscal 2027 looks particularly strong, whether we’re talking about anecdotal commentary, backlog, Hyper-Rail, scale across, which will be my focus on my follow-up. And I know you sort of termed this as an initial guide, but I’d be interested in your commentary on the prospects for delivering accelerating revenue growth in fiscal 2027.

I know you mentioned supply as a constraint, and maybe what things might look like if that constraint were relaxed a bit?

MARC GRAFF, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CIENA: Hey, Tim, it’s Marc. I think you kind of answered your own question. As we look at it, and you’re right, we are early, right? And typically, we wouldn’t do this.

But as we look at the demand or the dynamics that we’re seeing in the market, we thought it was prudent to give our owners and the investment community at least some initial thoughts on what we think the floor will be going into 2027. But as you rightly pointed out, all of our focus right now is on how do we get more supply to get more of that demand. And as Gary said, and Scott said as well, if we could get more demand, we would unwind that $10 billion of backlog faster, right? And that $8.3 billion to $8.4 billion that we talked about as the floor would be higher. And so from an absolute dollar terms, we think we are accelerating the growth from 24% to 25% to 26%, and into 27%, excuse me.

But it’s really going to be dependent on that supply. And a year ago, when we did this for the first time, we said we thought ’26 would grow 17%, and here we are at 35%. Now I’m not suggesting that my 30% in a year is going to be 60%, right, because we’re in obviously a different supply environment. But we want to make sure that we give you guys a floor and make sure that we can achieve at least that number that we give you while we continue to work on supply.

ANALYST: TIM SAVAGEAUX – NORTHLAND CAPITAL MARKETS: Great. And as a quick follow-up on scale across, to what extent is that maybe even the primary driver of growth in ’27? And I’d be interested in your reaction. Some pretty extraordinary comments from suppliers and competitors about dynamics and scale across — I think Cisco talking about 14x the port count versus traditional DCI, and some pretty spectacular comments from Lumentum as well. Maybe we can sharpen the focus on the scale across opportunity, how you see that TAM having maybe increased in recent quarters?

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Again, yes, Tim. I think it’s a major driver of demand. We were the first out there with the first scale across piece that came out of the data center. So we’ve got good visibility to it. I concur with most of the industry comments that have gone on with it.

I think it’s, excuse the pun, at a massive scale and it’s just beginning. That’s the point I would make — we’re just beginning to roll out the first connectivity between these data centers. It is almost entirely North American, U.S.-based, and we’re just beginning to link the first few data centers for a couple of hyperscalers to it. And that’s all in front of us.

So yes, it’s a massive driver to it. But we’re also seeing just the general increase in connectivity around the data centers as well. The agentic stuff is beginning to flow, particularly on the submarine cables, and the inference traffic we also think is a big step function mainly in front of us. So everywhere you look, basically, Tim, you’re looking at compounding waves of applications and traffic growth that will just build on top of each other. Because even scale across, which is really predominantly now on training, started off with synchronous training, you’re going to get asynchronous training as well.

You’re also going to get large amounts of inference cascading into that as well. So massive amounts of connectivity between these data centers in front of us. And we’re only just at the early innings of that. And we are incredibly well positioned to it, having the leading platform for Hyper-Rail. RLS was an industry standard.

We have about 70% of that market share and we expect that to continue with Hyper-Rail in this next generation and the leading modem technology. We can basically move bits faster and longer than anybody else in the world. And that’s a super valuable critical element that will enable us.

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: Thanks, Tim, for the question.

Closing Remarks

GARY SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CIENA: We look forward to seeing everyone over the next several weeks. We have a very busy schedule. Thanks for your time this morning.

OPERATOR: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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