What happened 

Shares of Avaya Holdings (AVYA), a cloud communications company, were tumbling this morning after the company reported worse-than-expected second-quarter results. 

The tech stock had fallen by 15.7% as of 11:16 a.m. ET. 

So what 

Avaya reported second-quarter non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings of $0.53 per share, which was down from $0.74 in the year-ago quarter and also below Wall Street's consensus estimate of $0.61 per share. 

A person looking at a computer.

Image source: Getty Images.

The company's revenue of $716 million in the quarter was down about 3% from the year-ago quarter and was far below analysts' average estimate of $737.9 million. 

Avaya CEO Jim Chirico tried to highlight some of the good news for the company, including that it's on track to hit annual recurring revenue of $1 billion by the end of 2022 for its OneCloud product.

"We are successfully repositioning the company from our historic one-time revenue model to a recurring one, in fact 75% of our new bookings were Avaya OneCloud," Chirico said. 

Now what 

But investors weren't happy with management's guidance either. The company expected non-GAAP earnings for the full year to be between $2.09 to $2.25, but that was below Wall Street's expectation of $2.80 for the full year. And Avaya's full-year revenue outlook of between $2.81 billion and $2.85 billion was below analysts' average estimate of $3 billion. 

Investors have grown increasingly concerned that high-growth technology stocks are riskier investments right now, as inflation hits a 40-year high. And as the Federal Reserve raises rates to try to get it under control, it's likely that investor fears of a potential economic slowdown could cause more share price dips in the near term.