Today's Major Market Move: Juniper Networks (JNPR) Gains Over 6% in Monday's Session

On a day when US equity markets were basically flat, there were a few standout performers, one of which was Juniper Networks (ticker: JNPR). Stifel Nicolaus released a note stating that they expected JNPR's current quarter results to be in-line. That news propelled the stock price to a 6.5% gain and made it the best performer in the S&P500 on Monday. Here's the list of the top performers:

Click here to go to the live table.

Longer term the picture isn't quite so pretty. JNPR's stock price is down going back to the beginning of 2008 and the company has missed earnings in the last three quarters. Here's a comparison chart of % change of EPS estimates, EPS actuals and stock price.

Click here to go to the live chart.

A big reason for the recent misses is that analysts have over estimated the impact of cloud and mobile computing on network related capital expenditures. The entire networking sector has struggled including Alcatel-Lucent (ticker:ALU) and to a lesser extent Cisco (ticker: CSCO). I suspect that many companies overspent on networking gear prior to 2008 and after the crash were left with plenty of excess capacity, which they are still in process of filling up.

UPDATE: This recent 'feel good' story was short lived as JNPR announced after hours that they were reducing their 4th quarter guidance. More detail from Forbes:

For the quarter, the company now sees revenue of $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion, down from a previously expected $1.16 billion to $1.22 billion. Juniper now sees non-GAAP EPS of 26-28 cents a share, down from 32-36 cents. Non-GAAP operating margin is expected to be below previous guidance of 21%-23%.

The company said the weaker-than-expected results reflects soft router demand from service providers, with a particular weak spot in the U.S.

Even with the bad news, the stock hasn't (yet) given back all of the previous day's gains:

Click here to go to the live chart.