Ciena 10-Q 2024-07-27

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, DC 20549

FORM 10-Q

(Mark one)

For the quarterly period ended July 27, 2024

OR

For the transition period from to

Commission File Number: 001-36250

Ciena Corporation

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

Delaware

(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization)

7035 Ridge Road, Hanover, MD

(Address of principal executive offices)

23-2725311

(I.R.S. Employer Identification No.)

21076

(Zip Code)

(410) 694-5700

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☑ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☑ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☑

Indicate the number of shares outstanding of each of the issuer’s classes of common stock, as of the latest practicable date:

CIENA CORPORATION

INDEX

FORM 10-Q

PART I – FINANCIAL INFORMATION

CIENA CORPORATION

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS

(in thousands, except per share data)

(unaudited)

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements.

CIENA CORPORATION

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (LOSS)

(in thousands)

(unaudited)

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements.

CIENA CORPORATION

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

(in thousands, except share data)

(unaudited)

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Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This report contains statements that discuss future events or expectations, projections of results of operations or financial condition, changes in the markets for our products and services, trends in our business, operational matters including the expansion of manufacturing capacity and accumulation of inventory, business prospects and strategies and other “forward-looking” information. Forward-looking statements may appear throughout this report, including in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors.” In some cases, you can identify “forward-looking statements” by words like “may,” “will,” “would,” “can,” “should,” “could,” “expects,” “future,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “intends,” “potential,” “projects,” “targets,” “prepare,” or “continue” or the negative of those words and other comparable words. You should be aware that the forward-looking statements contained in this report are based on our current views and assumptions, and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual events or results to differ materially.

For a discussion identifying some of the important factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements, see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” in this report. For a more complete understanding of the risks associated with an investment in our securities, you should review these factors and the rest of this report in combination with the more detailed description of our business and management’s discussion and analysis of financial condition and risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 28, 2023, which we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on December 15, 2023 (our “2023 Annual Report”). However, we operate in a very competitive and dynamic environment and new risks and uncertainties emerge, are identified or become apparent from time to time and therefore may not be identified in this report. We cannot predict all risks and uncertainties that could have an impact on the forward-looking statements contained in this report. You should be aware that the forward-looking statements contained in this report are based on our current views and assumptions. We undertake no obligation to revise or to update any forward-looking statements made in this report to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. The forward-looking statements in this report are intended to be subject to protection afforded by the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Unless the context requires otherwise, references in this report to “Ciena,” the “Company,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to Ciena Corporation and its consolidated subsidiaries.

Overview

This Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations is designed to provide an understanding of Ciena’s financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows, and should be read in conjunction with our Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements and the accompanying notes thereto included in Item 1 of Part I of this report and in Item 8 of Part II of our 2023 Annual Report.

We are a network platform, software, and services company, providing solutions that enable a wide range of network operators to deploy and manage next-generation networks that deliver services to businesses and consumers. We provide hardware, software, and services that support the delivery of video, data, and voice traffic over core, metro, aggregation, and access communications networks. Our solutions are used globally by communications service providers, cable and multiservice operators, cloud providers, submarine network operators, governments, and enterprises across multiple industry verticals. Our portfolio is designed to enable the Adaptive Network, which is our vision for a network end state that leverages a programmable and scalable network infrastructure, driven by software control and automation capabilities, that is informed by analytics and intelligence. Our solutions include Networking Platforms, including our Optical Networking and Routing and Switching portfolios, which can be applied from the network core to end-user access points, and which allow network operators to scale capacity, increase transmission speeds, allocate traffic efficiently and adapt dynamically to changing end-user service demands. To complement our Networking Platforms, we offer Platform Software, which includes our Navigator Network Control SuiteTM (“Navigator NCS”), which we previously referred to as Manage, Control, and Plan (MCP), and applications that deliver advanced multi-layer domain control and operations. Through our Blue Planet Software, we also enable complete service lifecycle management automation with productized operational support systems (OSS), which include inventory, orchestration and assurance solutions that help our customers to achieve closed loop automation across multi-vendor and multi-domain environments.

Order Volumes

For large portions of fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022, we received an unprecedented volume of orders for our products and services, which significantly exceeded our revenue and historical order volumes. We believe some portion of these orders reflected customer acceleration of future orders due to long lead times during the constrained supply environment of that period, as well as orders that were delayed due to the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our order volumes began to moderate in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, and we experienced order levels below revenue during fiscal 2023 and the first half of fiscal 2024, particularly from our communications service provider customers. We believe this was, in part, due to communications service providers in North America working through relatively high levels of inventory previously acquired, which has been made more difficult due to challenges installing and deploying equipment, including site readiness and access to fiber or other resources. In addition, in certain international geographies, we believe that caution driven by macroeconomic concerns and market-specific issues contributed to lower-than-expected order volumes from communications service providers. These dynamics have begun to improve, and order levels relative to revenue increased in the third quarter of fiscal 2024 compared to prior quarters in fiscal 2024, in part due to increased bandwidth demand related to generative AI. We continue to expect that improvements to these dynamics will be gradual and will not be linear. Notwithstanding these near-term impacts, we continue to believe that certain trends and shifts in business and consumer behaviors, including enterprise and consumer cloud network adoption, 5G, high-definition video, generative AI, and network operator focus on resilience and automation, represent positive, long-term drivers of bandwidth demand and long-term opportunities for our business.

Backlog and Order Delivery Timing

Historically, a meaningful portion of our quarterly revenue was generated from customer orders received during that same quarter (which we refer to as “book to revenue”) and was therefore less predictable and subject to fluctuation. As a result of elevated order volumes during portions of fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022, however, our backlog grew from $1.2 billion at the end of fiscal 2020 to $4.2 billion at the end of fiscal 2022. Accordingly, our revenue in recent fiscal years has been more significantly impacted by factors including a

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We are exposed to market risk related to changes in interest rates and foreign currency exchange rates. For a discussion of quantitative and qualitative disclosures about market risk, see Item 7A of Part II of our 2023 Annual Report.

Disclosure Controls and Procedures

As of the end of the period covered by this report, we carried out an evaluation under the supervision and with the participation of management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, of our disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended). Based upon this evaluation, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were effective as of the end of the period covered by this report.

Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting

There was no change in our internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”)) during the most recently completed fiscal quarter that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

PART II — OTHER INFORMATION

Item 1. Legal Proceedings

The information set forth under the heading “Litigation” in Note 19 to our Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 1 of Part I of this report, is incorporated herein by reference.

Investing in our securities involves a high degree of risk. Before investing in our securities, you should consider carefully the information contained in this report and in our 2023 Annual Report, including the information under “Risk Factors” in Item 1A of Part I thereof. This report contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. See “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Conditions and Results of Operations” above. Our actual results could differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Any of the risks discussed in our 2023 Annual Report, in this report, in other reports we file with the SEC, and other risks we have not anticipated or discussed, could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, or results of operations. Except as set forth below, there has been no material change to the material factors that make an investment in our securities speculative or risky from those presented in our 2023 Annual Report.

If we are unable to secure order growth, our revenue may not reach the levels we anticipate.

As a result of unprecedented order volumes placed by customers to address supply chain constraints and longer delivery lead times, our backlog grew from $1.2 billion at the end of fiscal 2020 to $4.2 billion at the end of fiscal 2022. Our revenue grew by 21% during fiscal 2023 as we consumed a significant portion of this backlog. Customer order volumes rapidly decreased and, throughout much of fiscal 2023 and into the first half of fiscal 2024, we experienced orders that were below our revenue. As a result, our backlog decreased to $2.1 billion as of the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2024. As backlog consumption reduces and represents a relatively smaller portion of our quarterly revenue, we expect to increasingly rely upon securing orders growth, particularly orders that we are able to convert into revenue during the same quarter in which they are received (which we refer to as "book to revenue"). Our future revenue growth will depend on securing increased orders, particularly from our communications service provider customers. Our failure to reach increased order levels, including a more typical composition of our quarterly revenue comprised of book to revenue orders, would adversely affect our revenue and results of operations.

The international scale of our sales and operations exposes us to additional risk and expense that could adversely affect our results of operations.

We market, sell and service our products globally, maintain personnel in numerous countries, and rely on a global supply chain for sourcing important components and manufacturing our products. Our international sales and operations are subject to inherent risks, including:

• adverse social, political and economic conditions, such as continued inflation and rising interest rates;

• effects of adverse changes in currency exchange rates;

• greater difficulty in collecting accounts receivable and longer collection periods;

• difficulty and cost of staffing and managing foreign operations;

• higher incidence and risk of corruption or unethical business practices;

• less protection for intellectual property rights in some countries;

• tax and customs changes that adversely impact our global sourcing strategy, manufacturing practices, transfer-pricing, or competitiveness of our products for global sales;

• compliance with certain testing, homologation or customization of products to conform to local standards;

• significant changes to free trade agreements, trade protection measures, tariffs and other import measures, export compliance, economic sanctions measures, domestic preference procurement requirements, qualification to transact business and additional regulatory requirements;

• natural disasters (including as a result of climate change), acts of war or terrorism, and public health emergencies, including the COVID-19 pandemic; and

• uncertain economic, legal and political conditions in Europe, Asia and other regions where we do business, including, for example, as a result of continued impacts of Brexit on the relationship between the United Kingdom and Europe, the ongoing military conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas, including related maritime impacts in the Red Sea, and changes in China-Taiwan and U.S.-China relations.

We utilize a sourcing strategy that emphasizes global procurement of materials that has direct or indirect dependencies upon a number of vendors with operations in the Asia-Pacific region. We also rely upon third-party contract manufacturers, including those with facilities in Canada, Mexico, Thailand and the United States, to manufacture, support and ship our products. Physical, regulatory, technological, market, reputational, and legal risks related to climate change in these regions and globally are increasing in impact and diversity and the magnitude of any short-term or long-term adverse impact on our business or results of operations remains unknown. The physical impacts of climate change, including as a result of certain types of natural disasters occurring more frequently or with more intensity or changing weather patterns, could disrupt our supply chain, result in damage to or closures of our facilities, and could otherwise have an adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Our international operations are subject to complex foreign and U.S. laws and regulations, including anti-bribery and corruption laws, antitrust or competition laws, data privacy laws, such as the GDPR, and environmental regulations, among others. In particular, recent years have seen a substantial increase in anti-bribery law enforcement activity by U.S. regulators, and we currently operate and seek to operate in many parts of the world that are recognized or perceived as having greater potential for corruption. Violations of any of these laws and regulations could result in fines and penalties, criminal sanctions against us or our employees, prohibitions on the conduct of our business and on our ability to offer our products and services in certain geographies, and significant harm to our business reputation. Our policies and procedures to promote compliance with these laws and regulations and to mitigate these risks may not protect us from all acts committed by our employees or third-party vendors, including contractors, agents and services partners or from the misinterpretation or changing application of such

laws. Additionally, the costs of complying with these laws (including the costs of investigations, auditing and monitoring) could adversely affect our current or future business.

Our business, operations and financial results could also be adversely impacted by instability, disruption or destruction in a significant geographic region, including as a result of war, terrorism, riot, civil insurrection or social unrest; natural or man-made disasters; public health emergencies; or economic instability or weakness. For example, in February 2022, armed conflict escalated between Russia and Ukraine. The United States and certain other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia and could impose further sanctions, which could damage or disrupt international commerce and the global economy. We are complying with a broad range of U.S. and international sanctions and export control requirements imposed on Russia and, in March 2022, we announced our decision to suspend our business operations in Russia immediately. Although this decision did not materially impact our results of operations for fiscal 2022 or 2023 due to the limited amount of business that we conducted in Russia historically, it is not possible to predict the broader or longer-term consequences of this conflict, which could include further sanctions, export control and import restrictions, embargoes, regional instability, geopolitical shifts and adverse effects on macroeconomic conditions, security conditions, currency exchange rates and financial markets. In addition, the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and related regional impacts have recently resulted in damage to submarine cables in the Red Sea and disruption of networks using those cables, which could impact future projects by our customers in this region. Such geopolitical instability and uncertainty could have a negative impact on our ability to sell to, ship products to, collect payments from, and support customers in certain countries and regions based on trade restrictions, sanctions, embargoes and export control law restrictions, and logistics restrictions including closures of air space, and could increase the costs, risks and adverse impacts from supply chain and logistics challenges.

The success of our international sales and operations will depend, in large part, on our ability to anticipate and manage these risks effectively. Our failure to manage any of these risks could harm our international operations, reduce our international sales, and could give rise to liabilities, costs or other business difficulties that could adversely affect our operations and financial results.

Item 2. Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities and Use of Proceeds

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

The following table provides a summary of repurchases of our common stock during the third quarter of fiscal 2024:

(1) On December 9, 2021, we announced that our Board of Directors authorized a program to repurchase up to $1.0 billion

of our common stock, which replaced in its entirety our previous stock repurchase program. The program may be modified, suspended, or discontinued at any time. During the third quarter of fiscal 2024, we repurchased $29.0 million of our common stock under the stock repurchase program, and we had $132.0 million remaining under the current repurchase authorization as of July 27, 2024. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations– Liquidity and Capital Resources – Stock Repurchase Authorization” in Item 2 of Part I of this report and Note 16 to our Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 1 of Part I of this report for information regarding the stock repurchase programs authorized by our Board of Directors.

Item 3. Defaults Upon Senior Securities

Not applicable.

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures

Not applicable.

Rule 10b5-1 Trading Arrangements

During the quarter ended July 27, 2024, none of our directors and officers (as defined in Rule 16a-1(f) of the Exchange Act) adopted, terminated, or modified the amount, pricing or timing provisions of any trading arrangement that is either (1) a contract, instruction or written plan intended to satisfy the affirmative defense conditions of Rule 10b5-1(c) (a “Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement”) or (2) a “non-Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement” (as defined in Item 408(c) of Regulation S-K).

SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.