Image source: Brocade.
Shares of Brocade Communications Systems (BRCD) surged in after-hours trading, as the company reported results for the first quarter of fiscal 2014.
The maker of storage networking equipment saw sales fall 4% year over year, landing at $565 million. Non-generally accepted accounting principles earnings rose 14% to $0.24 per share. Analysts were looking for adjusted earnings of $0.20 per share on about $550 million in revenue.
Brocade CEO Lloyd Carney pinned the quarter's success on strong demand for high-speed storage area networking solutions. Cutting-edge Generation 5 Fibre Channel products accounted for 71% of Brocade's storage sales in the quarter, up from 42% in the year-ago period.
Carney said he hopes to continue driving the product mix even further in the direction of highly profitable top-shelf solutions. "This is a transformational year for Brocade," he said in a prepared statement, "and we remain committed to our mission to be the network provider of choice to the world's data centers."
In a separate document, Brocade outlined second-quarter guidance ranges centered around $530 million in total sales and roughly $0.18 of adjusted earnings per share. The top end of this guidance aligns with the current analyst view.
Brocade shares surged as much as 9% higher on the strong first-quarter results, but fell back to a more modest 4% gain when the soft guidance started sinking in. Even so, Brocade prices at press time exceeded the stock's 52-week highs by about $0.10.
