Insider Selling: Ciena Co. (NYSE:CIEN) SVP Sells $196,840.00 in Stock

Ciena Co. (NYSE:CIEN) SVP David M. Rothenstein sold 3,500 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $56.24, for a total value of $196,840.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 205,421 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $11,552,877.04. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link.

Ciena Stock Performance

CIEN stock opened at $58.73 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $8.44 billion, a P/E ratio of 56.47, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 6.86 and a beta of 0.94. Ciena Co. has a 1 year low of $39.94 and a 1 year high of $63.24. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53, a current ratio of 4.06 and a quick ratio of 2.99. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $52.46 and its 200-day moving average price is $49.87.

Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, September 4th. The communications equipment provider reported $0.35 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.26 by $0.09. The firm had revenue of $942.30 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $928.31 million. Ciena had a return on equity of 5.98% and a net margin of 3.44%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was down 11.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business posted $0.36 EPS. On average, equities analysts forecast that Ciena Co. will post 1.15 earnings per share for the current year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Ciena

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Kapitalo Investimentos Ltda purchased a new position in shares of Ciena in the 4th quarter worth $30,000. Register Financial Advisors LLC bought a new position in Ciena in the 1st quarter worth $33,000. Headlands Technologies LLC bought a new position in Ciena in the 1st quarter worth $40,000. Canton Hathaway LLC bought a new position in Ciena in the 2nd quarter worth $40,000. Finally, Covestor Ltd raised its holdings in Ciena by 339.5% in the 1st quarter. Covestor Ltd now owns 1,213 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $60,000 after purchasing an additional 937 shares during the period. 91.99% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

CIEN has been the subject of several research reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. decreased their target price on Ciena from $67.00 to $60.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, May 30th. Needham & Company LLC reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $65.00 target price on shares of Ciena in a research report on Thursday, September 5th. Rosenblatt Securities raised their price objective on Ciena from $54.00 to $60.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, September 5th. Bank of America reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and set a $59.00 price objective on shares of Ciena in a research report on Thursday, September 5th. Finally, Raymond James lowered Ciena from a “strong-buy” rating to an “outperform” rating and reduced their price objective for the company from $59.00 to $54.00 in a research report on Thursday, June 6th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a hold rating and nine have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $59.15.

About Ciena

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.