Sales bottlenecks gag Juniper's growth in Q3

Having a big deal go on hold doesn't just spoil your day, it can upend a whole quarter, as Juniper Networks has found.

The Gin Palace today reported what it called “disappointing” numbers. As it warned earlier this month, its Q3 fell short of forecasts.

Its revenue fell year-on-year by two per cent to US$1,257.8 million, well shy of the previous forecast of between $1,290m and $1,350m.

As The Register speculated, the reason seems to be a big deal falling behind schedule. Juniper's CFO commentary [PDF] on today's announcement says:

“From a revenue perspective, the lower than expected result was primarily due to the timing of certain large switching deployments within the Cloud vertical, related to architectural shifts.”

In other words, someone building a big cloud apparently decided to hold off, either because they're reworking their design, or because they're waiting on new products.

Customer deployment timing hit both the switching segment (down four per cent year-on-year to $213m) and routing segment (down six per cent to $586m).

Security also slipped 17 per cent in the year to $71m, but services revenue grew nine per cent year-on-year to $388m.

Geographically, the only joy to be had was in the Asia Pacific (up 14 per cent to $230m), with EMEA shedding 12 per cent ($299m) and the Americas off by two points for the year to $729m.

GAPP net income was up one per cent year-on-year to $174.4m, in non-GAPP terms down five per cent to $211.1m. ®