Ciena Cites Progress

Ciena's (CIEN Quote) stubborn progress isn't taking Wall Street by storm.

The telecom-equipment maker beat quarterly estimates Thursday and put profitability in sight for next year. The company also said that it was seeing bigger orders coming in and costs continuing to come down.

"The pieces have started to come together," CEO Gary Smith said in an interview after the company's earnings conference call. But Ciena shares, which rose 5% in the morning after the strong report, settled back to a mere penny's gain at midafternoon.

Part of the problem is that investors have heard the Ciena comeback story a few times before. Another wrinkle is that Ciena's modest success puts it more firmly in league with some other stock-market idlers, like Lucent (LU Quote) and Nortel (NT Quote). ...