Insider Selling: Ciena Co. (NYSE:CIEN) SVP Sells 350 Shares of Stock

Ciena Co. (NYSE:CIEN) SVP Brodie Gage sold 350 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, January 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $85.91, for a total value of $30,068.50. Following the sale, the senior vice president now owns 49,547 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,256,582.77. The trade was a 0.70 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link.

Ciena Trading Up 1.1 %

CIEN stock traded up $0.92 on Friday, hitting $84.96. 1,561,548 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,717,832. The stock has a market capitalization of $12.07 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 149.06, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.49 and a beta of 0.89. The business’s fifty day moving average is $78.14 and its two-hundred day moving average is $64.08. Ciena Co. has a twelve month low of $43.30 and a twelve month high of $91.82. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.54, a current ratio of 3.55 and a quick ratio of 2.72.

Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, December 12th. The communications equipment provider reported $0.54 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.66 by ($0.12). Ciena had a return on equity of 4.72% and a net margin of 2.09%. The firm had revenue of $1.12 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.10 billion. During the same period last year, the business posted $0.56 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was down .5% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts forecast that Ciena Co. will post 1.57 earnings per share for the current year.

Ciena declared that its board has authorized a stock repurchase plan on Wednesday, October 2nd that permits the company to repurchase $1.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization permits the communications equipment provider to repurchase up to 10.5% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are often a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

Institutional Trading of Ciena

A number of institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of CIEN. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. grew its stake in Ciena by 26.4% during the second quarter. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. now owns 10,647 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $513,000 after buying an additional 2,227 shares during the period. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. boosted its position in Ciena by 42.2% during the 2nd quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. now owns 223,051 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $10,747,000 after purchasing an additional 66,214 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP increased its holdings in Ciena by 24.0% in the 2nd quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 2,706,308 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $130,392,000 after purchasing an additional 523,313 shares in the last quarter. Amalgamated Bank raised its position in Ciena by 2.4% in the second quarter. Amalgamated Bank now owns 81,232 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $3,914,000 after purchasing an additional 1,869 shares during the period. Finally, Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV lifted its stake in shares of Ciena by 52.4% during the second quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV now owns 7,737 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $373,000 after purchasing an additional 2,661 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 91.99% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms recently commented on CIEN. BNP Paribas lowered shares of Ciena from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and boosted their price objective for the stock from $59.00 to $67.00 in a research report on Wednesday, October 9th. Citigroup upped their price target on shares of Ciena from $84.00 to $98.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, December 13th. Rosenblatt Securities raised their price objective on shares of Ciena from $75.00 to $94.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, December 13th. Evercore ISI cut Ciena from an “outperform” rating to an “in-line” rating and set a $65.00 target price on the stock. in a report on Tuesday, October 15th. Finally, Barclays raised their price target on Ciena from $67.00 to $97.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Friday, December 13th. Seven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $77.00.

Ciena Company Profile

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.