Stock Traders Purchase High Volume of Ciena Call Options (NYSE:CIEN)

Ciena Co. (NYSE:CIEN) was the target of unusually large options trading on Friday. Traders acquired 3,519 call options on the company. This is an increase of 61% compared to the typical daily volume of 2,182 call options.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Ciena news, SVP Jason Phipps sold 2,200 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, October 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $61.49, for a total value of $135,278.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 91,149 shares in the company, valued at $5,604,752.01. This represents a 2.36 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, SVP Joseph Cumello sold 1,289 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $68.99, for a total transaction of $88,928.11. Following the sale, the senior vice president now owns 39,486 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,724,139.14. This trade represents a 3.16 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders have sold 10,489 shares of company stock valued at $657,051. 0.83% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Trading of Ciena

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. FMR LLC lifted its position in Ciena by 0.5% in the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 21,664,066 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $1,334,290,000 after acquiring an additional 108,407 shares in the last quarter. Barrow Hanley Mewhinney & Strauss LLC increased its holdings in Ciena by 119.9% in the 2nd quarter. Barrow Hanley Mewhinney & Strauss LLC now owns 5,397,560 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $260,054,000 after buying an additional 2,943,146 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its stake in Ciena by 1.2% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 4,439,478 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $273,427,000 after acquiring an additional 53,078 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP boosted its holdings in shares of Ciena by 24.0% during the 2nd quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 2,706,308 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $130,392,000 after acquiring an additional 523,313 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of Ciena by 1.4% during the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 2,408,014 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $148,348,000 after purchasing an additional 33,074 shares during the last quarter. 91.99% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities analysts have recently commented on the stock. Barclays raised their price objective on shares of Ciena from $67.00 to $97.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Friday. Evercore ISI downgraded Ciena from an “outperform” rating to an “in-line” rating and set a $65.00 price objective on the stock. in a research report on Tuesday, October 15th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered Ciena from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $65.00 target price on the stock. in a research note on Monday, October 7th. Rosenblatt Securities lifted their target price on shares of Ciena from $75.00 to $94.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday. Finally, Citigroup increased their price target on shares of Ciena from $68.00 to $84.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, December 5th. Seven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $75.92.

Ciena Trading Up 7.1 %

Ciena stock traded up $5.99 during trading hours on Friday, reaching $90.51. The stock had a trading volume of 2,826,273 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,831,294. The company has a fifty day simple moving average of $68.45 and a 200-day simple moving average of $57.52. The stock has a market cap of $13.07 billion, a PE ratio of 95.72, a PEG ratio of 5.95 and a beta of 0.95. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53, a current ratio of 4.06 and a quick ratio of 2.99. Ciena has a 52 week low of $42.20 and a 52 week high of $91.25.

Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, December 12th. The communications equipment provider reported $0.54 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.66 by ($0.12). The company had revenue of $1.12 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.10 billion. 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 .5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $0.56 earnings per share. Analysts forecast that Ciena will post 1.13 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Ciena announced that its board has approved a share repurchase program on Wednesday, October 2nd that authorizes the company to repurchase $1.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the communications equipment provider to repurchase up to 10.5% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are usually an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

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.