Insider Selling: Ciena Co. (NYSE:CIEN) SVP Sells 3,500 Shares of Stock

Ciena Co. (NYSE:CIEN) SVP David M. Rothenstein sold 3,500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction 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 in the company, valued at $11,552,877.04. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website.

Ciena Trading Up 1.3 %

CIEN opened at $58.73 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $8.44 billion, a P/E ratio of 56.47, a P/E/G ratio of 6.86 and a beta of 0.94. Ciena Co. has a 12 month low of $39.94 and a 12 month high of $63.24. The company has a current ratio of 4.06, a quick ratio of 2.99 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $52.46 and a 200 day moving average of $49.87.

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

Institutional Trading of Ciena

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Kapitalo Investimentos Ltda purchased a new stake in Ciena in the fourth quarter worth $30,000. Register Financial Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in Ciena in the first quarter worth $33,000. Headlands Technologies LLC purchased a new stake in Ciena in the first quarter worth $40,000. Canton Hathaway LLC purchased a new stake in Ciena in the second quarter worth $40,000. Finally, Covestor Ltd increased its stake in Ciena by 339.5% in the first 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. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 91.99% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of equities research analysts have commented on CIEN shares. B. Riley decreased their price target on Ciena from $68.00 to $66.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, June 7th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. decreased their price target on Ciena from $67.00 to $60.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, May 30th. Bank of America reissued a “neutral” rating and set a $59.00 price target on shares of Ciena in a report on Thursday, September 5th. Stifel Nicolaus raised their price target on Ciena from $62.00 to $68.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, September 3rd. Finally, Morgan Stanley lifted their target price on Ciena from $55.00 to $60.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 4th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a hold rating and nine have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target 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.