Optics Stocks Divide: Coherent and Cisco Drop After Earnings While Nokia and Ciena Soar

The optics complex is splitting in two this morning. Coherent (NYSE:COHR | COHR Price Prediction) is trading down 4.94% and Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) is down 8.48% after both reported fiscal fourth-quarter results last night. Yet the pure-play optical vendors that sell into the exact same demand story are green. Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) is up 6.04% and Nokia (NYSE:NOK) is up 3.29%.

Margins and Cash Flow Are the Reason the Reporters Are Red

Both earnings were beats. Coherent posted revenue of $2.05 billion, up 33.74% year over year, and non-GAAP EPS of $1.74 against a $1.612consensus. The Datacenter and Communications segment hit $1.615 billion, up 59% year over year on a pro forma basis. The sore spot is the 8-K cash disclosure: fiscal 2026 operating cash flow of $79.5 million, down 87.45% year over year, against capital expenditures of $1.1029 billion, up 150.18%. Coming into the earnings report, COHR had already rallied 8.35% over the prior week, which included a steep sell-off on Monday and gains last week following reports of potential U.S. bans on Chinese transceiver shipments.

Cisco reported $17.25 billion in revenue, up 17.6% year over year, with $4.0 billion of AI infrastructure orders in the quarter and $9.3 billion for fiscal 2026. FY2027 guidance calls for revenue of $72.2 billion to $73.4 billion and $7.5 billion in AI infrastructure revenue. The issue is margin mix. Non-GAAP gross margin dropped to 66.3% from 68.4% on heavier AI hardware volume and memory cost inflation. CEO Chuck Robbins called it “a very strong close to fiscal 2026, marking another record year for Cisco,” but the stock is trading as if expectations were priced for perfection.

Why Ciena and Nokia Are Rallying Off the Same Data

The read-through is that data center interconnect and coherent optical transport demand is inflecting hard. On Lumentum’s conference call earlier this week CEO Michael Hurlston said:

“Expanding, inferencing and training applications are driving full rate connectivity between data centers, while political and regulatory constraints favor smaller, more modular builds. These 2 factors among others are substantially increasing the demand for our pump laser solutions. To put this in perspective, for one major hyperscaler, the network capacity connecting just 2 AI data center sites could double the total global backbone capacity they built over the entirety of the last decade. To support the growth and scale across deployments, we have secured multiple long-term customer agreements that helped offset our planned capital expenditures. We continue to expect a fourfold increase in our pump laser shipments over the next several quarters to meet this escalating demand.”

That quote is music to the ears of companies like Nokia and Ciena. In addition, Coherent CEO James Anderson said on last night’s call that “The demand just continues to go up for anything DCI or scale across related.”Cisco said their Acacia optics unit had another $1 billion quarter that was “very strong.”

That is exactly the addressable market Ciena and Nokia sell into. Ciena’s most recent quarter showed 39.51% revenue growth with cloud provider revenue at 46% of total, growing 70% year over year. Nokia’s Q2 AI and Cloud revenue more than doubled year over year with $3.2 billion in AI and Cloud order intake. Nokia trades as a US-listed ADR.

Another catalyst for this group appears to be Wall Street commentary. Last night JPMorgan issued a note taht the strongest parts of Cisco’s earnings had positive read-through for Nokia as the company reported surprisingly strong telecom orders. That’s also positive read-through for Ciena itself.

The Split on the Screen

The two that reported are down. The transport and interconnect vendors around them are up. Coherent still has heavy analyst backing, with a consensus target of $394.62 against today’s $340.04 print.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.