Juniper Networks, Inc. (NYSE:JNPR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Rami Rahim: Yes, I’d be happy to. So for 400-gig there’s been 100 new wins between Service Providers and Cloud providers since our last update, which was a quarter ago. In terms of competitive landscape, it’s always been a competitive environment. I believe that we have real strength, experience and know-how, especially in the WAN for service providers and hyperscale cloud providers where we can leverage our existing footprint in order to basically understand the specific feature by feature requirements and do sort of incremental upgrades to 400 gig. But we’re actually also seeing some really promising success, if you will, in the cloud-ready data center space, and they basically inside the data center switching fabric with 120 cumulative total 400-gig data center wins now and I do believe that we’re in the early innings right now.

I get this question quite a bit, where I know it feels like we’ve been talking about the 400-gig opportunity for a while. But actually, it’s still early periods because there’s sort of this time period in the early part of any new Ethernet speed inflection point that starts with the introduction of optics, the optics have to become cost-effective. Then the project need to actually start to kick in. There’s a testing period and there is a deployment period. I actually think that we’re sort of right now in the early stages of that growth, and I do believe that it’s going to be a wonderful opportunity for us, especially in SP and Cloud.

Operator: This completes the — absolutely. Last question is coming from Fahad Najam with Loop Capital.

Fahad Najam: I hate to go back to the topic of order normalization. Can you maybe help us maybe add a dimension of where lead times are? And should we expect as lead times now, customers will place orders as they normalize. Any indication on how lead times are trending? And then I have another question on what you’re seeing on the broader market in terms of demand trends. You cited some macroeconomic challenges. Is it more pertaining to site segments like high tech or is it more broad? Any color there would be also very helpful.

Rami Rahim: Let me start with the second part, and then I’ll hand it over to you, Ken, for the first part. When we say some uncertainty that’s out there, it’s really more in conversations we’re having with customers, the scrutiny that they’re placing on budgets. There have been some, a few project push-outs, no cancellations really. But despite that, I think that there are plenty of reasons for us to be optimistic. The strategic importance of the network, digital transformation projects, the 400-gig opportunity that I just talked about, our Enterprise momentum that I think, in many ways, is unique to Juniper because of the differentiation, especially in artificial intelligence that we have and then the backlog that we’re sitting on. Ken?

Ken Miller: Yes, from a lead time perspective, it’s hard to get specific because the reality is all products have different lead times. But the range really is from 30 days to upwards of 9 months, even 12 months in some cases. One way to look at it would be our overall backlog. If you just went on a FIFO basis, we have roughly two quarters of backlogs. So lead times on average roughly six months as one might look at it and it’s down a bit from where we entered the quarter. So we are seeing some improvements there.

Jess Lubert: Thank you, everyone, for your time. That concludes today’s call.

Operator: Thank you, gentlemen. This concludes today’s conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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