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Ciena (CIEN) FY2025 results: revenue $4.8 billion, up 18.8% on the year

Ciena Corp. (CIEN) reported revenue of $4.8 billion for fiscal 2025, the year ended 1 November 2025, up 18.8% on the year before. Net income was $123 million, up 46.9%, and diluted earnings per share $0.85. The figures are the company's own, from the 10-K it filed with the SEC on 12 December 2025.

Revenue
$4.8 billion
+18.8% on the year
FY2018FY2025
Operating margin
4.1%
4.1% a year earlier
FY2018FY2025
Net income
$123 million
+46.9% on the year
FY2018FY2025
Diluted EPS
$0.85
+46.6% on the year
FY2018FY2025

this yearthe year beforeHover a bar for its figure.

The year in brief

What management said about the year

Guidance figures: 8 new.

  • Fourth-quarter revenue rose 20%: Fiscal fourth quarter revenue was $1.35 billion, compared with $1.12 billion a year earlier, the company reported.
  • Quarterly EPS shown GAAP and adjusted: Fourth-quarter diluted EPS was $0.13 GAAP and $0.91 adjusted, against $0.25 and $0.54 a year earlier. Fiscal 2025 was $0.85 GAAP and $2.64 adjusted.
  • Optical networking remained the largest line: Optical networking revenue was $929.2 million in the fiscal fourth quarter, against $779.6 million a year earlier, and $3,246.3 million for fiscal 2025.
  • Three customers gave 43.6% of revenue: In the fiscal fourth quarter, three customers each represented 10%-plus of revenue, totaling 43.6% of revenue.
  • Restructuring and impairment charges rose: Significant asset impairments and restructuring costs were $106.9 million in the fiscal fourth quarter, against $2.6 million. The company said this includes an $89.1 million charge for abandoning an in-process R&D intangible asset.
Read the Q4 FY2025 earnings call summary

From this 10-K

Ciena is a network technology company selling hardware, software and services to network operators, adding network capacity and automating service delivery. Its solutions carry traffic for cloud, voice, video, data and artificial intelligence applications and are used worldwide by cloud providers, service providers and other operators across industry verticals. The four operating segments are Networking Platforms, Platform Software and Services, Blue Planet Automation Software and Services, and Global Services. The financial year ends in late October or early November.

Ciena Corp., the 10-K for 2025

Ciena is a network technology company selling hardware, software and services to network operators, adding network capacity and automating service delivery. Its solutions carry traffic for cloud, voice, video, data and artificial intelligence applications and are used worldwide by cloud providers, service providers and other operators across industry verticals. The four operating segments are Networking Platforms, Platform Software and Services, Blue Planet Automation Software and Services, and Global Services. The financial year ends in late October or early November.

Who buys

Cloud provider customers, also called web-scale or hyper-scale providers, include internet content providers and providers of internet services and infrastructure such as data centres, cloud compute, software as a service, storage and web hosting; they also buy capacity on service provider submarine and wireline networks, which has shaped the technology service providers adopt. Service provider customers include wireline and wireless carriers, submarine operators and access network providers, some of which now offer managed optical fibre arrangements to cloud providers that want dedicated connectivity without owning the infrastructure, while other customers include cable and multiservice operators, governments, research and education networks and enterprises.

What is driving demand

Networks continue to see rising demand for bandwidth as traffic grows, which the company attributes primarily to artificial intelligence. Training large-scale models requires coupled clusters of graphics processors with immense bandwidth, low latency and power efficiency, which is influencing where data centres sit and spreading training workloads geographically, while deploying models at scale makes inference a primary driver of low-latency, high-capacity investment closer to end users.

Networking Platforms

The segment holds the Optical Networking and Routing and Switching portfolios. Optical products use the company's WaveLogic coherent optical technology and photonics, including lasers, modulators, optical amplifiers and wavelength multiplexers, and address cloud and AI networking, data centre interconnect, long haul, metro and submarine connectivity. Key products are the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform for core, regional, metro and submarine networks, the Waveserver modular interconnect platform, the 6500 Reconfigurable Line System for programmable photonic line systems, and coherent pluggable transceivers for its own systems and third-party equipment; interconnect products from the Nubis acquisition in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 join the portfolio. Routing and Switching products run on the company's service-aware IP operating system and cover the 3000 and 5000 families for access and aggregation, business services, wireless fronthaul and backhaul and residential broadband, the 8100 coherent routing platforms combining multi-terabit routing with coherent optical transport, and virtualisation software including a cloud-grade router.

Software and services

Platform Software provides domain control management, analytics, data and planning tools, including Navigator NCS for multi-layer control of routing, switching and optical equipment, along with subscription services, consulting, migration, installation and technical support, while Global Services covers advisory consulting, implementation and systems integration, and maintenance, support, learning and managed services. Blue Planet Automation Software is a cloud native, standards-based portfolio for inventory management, multi-domain and multi-cloud service orchestration, route optimisation and unified assurance and analytics, sold with professional services, consulting and design and technical support, aimed at reducing the cost and complexity of operational support systems and automating service delivery across vendors and domains.

Selling, making and competing

The Global Customer Engagement organisation covers direct and indirect sales, systems engineering and services, and from fiscal 2026 is organised around global cloud and content customers plus the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific, Japan and India, with a global partner programme including distributors alongside it. Manufacturing relies on third-party contract manufacturers with facilities in Canada, Mexico, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States, which also handle design and prototype development, support and shipping, while the company controls supplier selection and commercial terms for the main inputs and uses partners to fulfil and deliver products, an approach it says conserves capital and allows it to adjust to demand without heavy plant investment. Competition is intense and dominated by a few very large multinationals, with Nokia, Huawei, Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and ZTE named, along with smaller rivals, and Marvell, Credo and Broadcom as the company moves into data centre interconnects; Blue Planet competes with Cisco, Nokia, Amdocs, ServiceNow, Netcracker and Ericsson, and competition turns on price, functionality, incumbency, relationships, time-to-market, technology roadmap, support, product security and lifecycle cost.

People

The workforce numbered 9,080 employees at 1 November 2025, approximately 98% of them full-time, across 39 countries, with approximately 56% in the Americas, 36% in Asia Pacific and 8% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, most in engineering, operations or sales roles.

From Ciena's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 1 November 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 12 December 2025: read the full 10-K.

The four quarters: Q1 FY2025 · Q2 FY2025 · Q3 FY2025 · Q4 FY2025

Income statement (profit and loss)

$ millionFY2025FY2024FY2023On the yearLast 8 years
Revenue4,7704,0154,387+18.8%
Cost of revenue2,7652,2952,508+20.4%
Gross profit2,0051,7201,879+16.6%
Gross margin42.0%42.8%42.8%
Research and development848767751+10.5%
Operating income198167358+18.6%
Operating margin4.1%4.1%8.2%
Interest expense89.497.088.0-7.9%
Pre-tax income156120324+30.4%
Income tax32.935.968.8-8.2%
Effective tax rate21.1%29.9%21.3%
Net income12384.0255+46.9%
Net margin2.6%2.1%5.8%
Diluted EPS$0.85$0.58$1.71+46.6%
$ million except per share.
Read moreFree cash flow is operating cash flow less capital expenditure; the effective tax rate is income tax over pre-tax income; margins are the line over revenue. Gross profit is revenue less cost of revenue, and operating income is revenue less the company's own total costs, where the statement does not print those lines. Those four are arithmetic on the filed numbers; everything else is as filed. Money is in $ million as the company files it, or in $ billion by the switch above the tables; per share figures and share counts are as they are.

Cash flow

$ millionFY2025FY2024FY2023On the yearLast 8 years
Operating cash flow806515168+56.7%
Capital expenditure141137106+3.0%
Free cash flow66537862.1+76.1%
Free cash flow margin13.9%9.4%1.4%
Cash from investing-241-306-383
Cash from financing-406-285229
Depreciation and amortisation130122130+6.1%
Share-based compensation185156130+18.0%
Buybacks335255242+31.4%
Diluted shares, weighted145m146m149m-0.5%
Shares outstanding at period end141m143m145m-1.1%

Balance sheet

$ millionFY2025FY2024FY2023On the yearLast 8 years
Shareholders' equity2,7292,8162,848-3.1%
Debt1,5361,5451,555-0.6%
Operating lease liabilities32.525.133.3+29.5%
Finance lease liabilities38.643.548.2-11.3%
Other liabilities1,5281,2121,117+26.1%
Total liabilities and equity5,8655,6415,601+4.0%
Fixed assets387n/an/a
Goodwill521445445+17.2%
Intangible assets224165206+35.9%
Investments273397239-31.2%
Cash and equivalents1,0929351,011+16.8%
Receivables9769091,004+7.4%
Inventory8268201,051+0.7%
Other assets1,5651,9701,647-20.6%
Total assets5,8655,6415,601+4.0%

10-K for the year ended 1 November 2025, filed 12 December 2025: the filing.