Head-To-Head Analysis: Ciena (CIEN) & Its Competitors

Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) is one of 110 publicly-traded companies in the “Communications Equipment” industry, but how does it compare to its competitors? We will compare Ciena to similar businesses based on the strength of its earnings, risk, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, profitability, dividends and valuation.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Ciena and its competitors gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Ciena	$4.77 billion	$123.34 million	54.23
Ciena Competitors	$2.69 billion	$292.54 million	-3.21

Ciena has higher revenue, but lower earnings than its competitors. Ciena is trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more expensive than other companies in its industry.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

92.0% of Ciena shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 44.4% of shares of all “Communications Equipment” companies are held by institutional investors. 0.6% of Ciena shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 18.4% of shares of all “Communications Equipment” companies are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for Ciena and its competitors, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Ciena	0	6	15	1	2.77
Ciena Competitors	1073	4031	7095	382	2.54

Ciena currently has a consensus price target of $485.93, indicating a potential upside of 100.03%. As a group, “Communications Equipment” companies have a potential upside of 53.42%. Given Ciena’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Ciena is more favorable than its competitors.

Profitability

This table compares Ciena and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Ciena	10.87%	25.33%	11.27%
Ciena Competitors	1.09%	-4.97%	3.05%

Risk and Volatility

Ciena has a beta of 1.33, indicating that its share price is 33% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Ciena’s competitors have a beta of 1.17, indicating that their average share price is 17% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Ciena beats its competitors on 11 of the 13 factors compared.

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. Its products include 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, Waveserver stackable interconnect system, and the 6500 Reconfigurable line system, and the 5400 family of Packet-Optical platforms, as well as 8100 coherent routing platforms; 3000 family of service delivery switches and the 5000 family of service aggregation switches, as well as 8700 Packetwave Platform and 6500 Packet Transport System. This segment also sells operating system software and enhanced software features embedded in each of its products. The company’s Blue Planet Automation Software and Services segment provides multi-domain service orchestration, inventory, route optimization and analysis, multi-cloud orchestration, and unified assurance and analytics services. Its Platform Software and Service segment offers MCP domain controller solution, and OneControl unified management system, as well as planning tools. The company’s Global Services segment provides maintenance support and training, installation and deployment, and consulting and network design services. Ciena Corporation was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Hanover, Maryland.