Kestra Investment Management LLC Makes New $97,000 Investment in Ciena Co. (NYSE:CIEN)

Kestra Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in Ciena Co. (NYSE:CIEN) during the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor acquired 1,144 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock, valued at approximately $97,000.

Several other hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the stock. Greenleaf Trust boosted its position in Ciena by 2.8% in the 4th quarter. Greenleaf Trust now owns 4,978 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $422,000 after purchasing an additional 136 shares in the last quarter. Coldstream Capital Management Inc. raised its stake in shares of Ciena by 3.8% during the 3rd quarter. Coldstream Capital Management Inc. now owns 4,742 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $292,000 after buying an additional 175 shares during the period. CIBC Asset Management Inc raised its stake in shares of Ciena by 5.3% during the 4th quarter. CIBC Asset Management Inc now owns 4,469 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $379,000 after buying an additional 226 shares during the period. US Bancorp DE raised its stake in shares of Ciena by 2.4% during the 3rd quarter. US Bancorp DE now owns 10,307 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $635,000 after buying an additional 244 shares during the period. Finally, UMB Bank n.a. raised its stake in shares of Ciena by 59.2% during the 4th quarter. UMB Bank n.a. now owns 718 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $61,000 after buying an additional 267 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 91.99% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several brokerages have recently weighed in on CIEN. Barclays upped their target price on Ciena from $67.00 to $97.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Friday, December 13th. Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $95.00 target price on shares of Ciena in a research note on Friday, January 10th. Northland Securities upped their target price on Ciena from $46.00 to $60.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research note on Friday, December 13th. Morgan Stanley downgraded Ciena from an “overweight” rating to an “equal weight” rating and set a $63.00 target price for the company. in a research note on Monday, October 28th. Finally, Citigroup increased their price objective on Ciena from $84.00 to $98.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, December 13th. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eight have given a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $78.77.

Ciena Stock Down 0.5 %

Shares of CIEN opened at $86.58 on Friday. Ciena Co. has a 52-week low of $43.30 and a 52-week high of $101.44. The company has a market capitalization of $12.35 billion, a PE ratio of 151.90, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.60 and a beta of 0.88. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $86.75 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $70.83. The company has a quick ratio of 2.72, a current ratio of 3.55 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.54.

Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, December 12th. The communications equipment provider reported $0.54 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.66 by ($0.12). Ciena had a return on equity of 4.72% and a net margin of 2.09%. The company had revenue of $1.12 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.10 billion. During the same period last year, the business earned $0.56 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was down .5% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Ciena Co. will post 1.6 EPS for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, SVP David M. Rothenstein sold 3,500 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, December 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $89.09, for a total transaction of $311,815.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 192,997 shares in the company, valued at approximately $17,194,102.73. This represents a 1.78 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, SVP Jason Phipps sold 5,648 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, January 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $84.64, for a total value of $478,046.72. Following the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 109,878 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $9,300,073.92. This represents a 4.89 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 56,642 shares of company stock valued at $4,818,176 in the last three months. 0.93% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

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.