Juniper Mostly Mum as Spending Picture Dims

A break-even first quarter comes as no surprise, but second-quarter flatness has some people worried.

Author:: Scott Moritz
Publish date:: Apr 11, 2002 6:35 PM EDT

Updated from 5 p.m. EDT

With customers spending plans still in flux,

Juniper

Thursday projected a sequentially flat second quarter and declined to offer any full-year financial forecasts.

For the first quarter, the networking gearmaker met recently lowered financial targets Thursday, posting a break-even quarter on $122 million in revenue. A year ago, the company earned 25 cents on revenue of $332 million.

Juniper executives said on a postclose conference call with analysts that the networking gearmaker expects to remain cash-flow positive throughout the year, keeping gross margins in the current 59% range. The executives also said they would start to book sales of new products, including cable networking gear, this quarter.

But to some observers, these comments only helped to reinforce suspicions that the company is losing market share in its core routing business to rival

Cisco

(CSCO) - Get Report

Another eye-opener on the call was a question from one analyst about the status of Juniper's head of marketing. Juniper executives replied that VP of marketing Carl Showalter did indeed leave the company for a venture capital shop three weeks ago. Some analysts were left wondering why the company hadn't announced the departure through a press release, as big companies often do.

Otherwise, the report and the call were mostly uneventful, given that the results were all but predetermined. Juniper warned of a shortfall March 27 as big customers

WorldCom

(WCOM)

and

Qwest

(Q)

continued to slash their spending plans. Juniper shares, already more than 80% off their one-year highs, fell 54 cents Thursday to $10.34.

And as expected, Juniper gave no progress report on its widely anticipated new product, the M320, code-named Gibson. We'll have to wait till next quarter for that, perhaps.