I’ve found myself posting some reports on boards that don’t seem to have much coverage for stocks I own. So here goes for ANET.
Special thanks to Seeking Alpha for the transcript which can be read in full here:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3996232-arista-networks-anet……
Revenue of $268.7M up 37.4%
EPS of 74 cents up 37%
Much of the rest of CEO Ullal’s comments pertained to their technology of which I do not understand. If there are industry experts in the routing field out there, I would love to hear from you on your thoughts about ANET’s product. Is it superior and why? Will it have staying power in your opinion?
For now, the company has been growing at a very high rate, yet steady. Similar to BOFI…straight line growth (on a semi-log chart anyway).
Look at rev and earnings this quarter. Look at them for the past several quarters…mid 30 percent growth consistently.
The next section come from the CFO’s comments. If you see numbers in parentheses, those are the linked quarter’s numbers.
Earnings and revenue growth driven in large part by “Cloud Titan Verticals.” Services were 12.3% of sales consistent with last Q (12%).
GM was 64.1% down slightly (64.4%) but above mid-point of guidance.
OpEx was $97.3M and up 13.5% from last Q.
R&D was 22.9% of rev (22.7%)
Sales & Marketing was 10.4% (9.9%) due to head count.
Operating Income was $75M or 27.9% of Rev (29%).
EPS of 74 cents on 72.8M total shares
Cash - $824M (763M) with $55M generated this Q ($71M)
Inventory up to $118M ($84M) as directed in the last call due to new contract manufacturer in the USA. Their guidance assumes most product will be manufactured overseas in the next Q. Moving forward, their GM may be impacted around 200 bp by manufacturing in the States. I’m wondering if there is a positive to that?
Guidance:
$279M to $285M with GM of 62 to 65% and Operating Margin of 26% and share count of 73 million. Share count last quarter increased 300,000 and this quarter looks to increase 500,000.
Okay. So that was the “easy” reporting of the conference call. More difficult to report on is the Q&A and it seems most of the Q&A was directed toward my question earlier about domestic manufacturing. I wondered to myself, “Self. Why is ANET manufacturing domestically when it hurts margins? Are they just very patriotic (that was tongue-in-cheek)?”
I needed to look back to the last conference call in context with this quarter’s call. ANET in the last call claimed they were pursuing domestic manufacturing as 75% of their sales are from North America. While I can potentially see a lead time reduction due to proximity, very few companies employ this strategy in the face of reduced margins.
However, it seems to me they were FORCED to manufacture domestically. I don’t know the mechanics of the ITC rulings showing ANET infringed on Cisco, but apparently they cannot use international manufacturers until the ITC approves their design-arounds. ANET was asked on the last call if their domestic supply could handle all of their sales in the case of an unfavorable decision. They claimed the domestic facility could, indeed, handle if needed.
I am not enamored that it took some digging to come to this realization. I wish ANET would have come right out and said, “Hey, listen. We need to employ domestic supply in case the ITC ruling doesn’t go as planned. Yes, this will slightly hurt margins if we have to use them solely. Yet, this is only a bump in the road long term.” Instead, they seemed to hide the true fact.
Can anyone else comment on this? Am I reading this correctly?
I can’t say that it is a huge red flag for me, but it piqued my curiosity.
Thanks all,
A.J.