Soft telecom market prompts Juniper to revise Q4 down

Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR) is blaming weak demand from telecom service providers for lower fourth quarter profit and revenue. The company yesterday released preliminary quarterly data that showed it's missing forecasts for sales and profits.

Juniper said revenues would be $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion, shy of the $1.16 billion to $1.22 billion it has forecast. EPS was forecast earlier at 32-36 cents, but now is expected to come in at 26-28 cents for the quarter,

Bloomberg said Verizon Wireless' intention to reduce capex on older wireless technology was likely one of the culprits, although Juniper didn't specify which service providers impacted its bottom line.

Juniper competes with companies like Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Adtran (Nasdaq: ADTN) and Extreme Networks (Nasdaq: EXTR) in the network infrastructure business. Adtran last month saw its rating cut by Goldman Sachs.

Juniper will provide full results Jan. 26.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg article

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