Ciena (CIEN) Earnings: Q3 Fiscal 2026 Results and Next Report Date

The quarter ended August 1, 2026 and Ciena published the results on September 3, 2026. Revenue and diluted EPS are shown against Q3 fiscal 2025, the same quarter a year earlier, which takes seasonal swings out of the comparison. Ciena reports EPS two ways: GAAP, under the accounting rules every US filer follows, and Adjusted (non-GAAP) EPS, which leaves out items the company considers outside its operating results. The release reconciles the two, and when they diverge, the reconciliation says why.

• Ciena's fiscal year ends on the Saturday nearest October 31. Q3 fiscal 2026 ended August 1, 2026, and Q3 fiscal 2025 ended August 2, 2025.
• Ciena's financial statements are in thousands of dollars; its segment table is in millions. Revenue, net income and segment figures here are in millions.

Source: Ciena Q3 fiscal 2026 results, September 3, 2026. Also in the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended August 1, 2026. Figures as reported; checked against the release on November 10, 2026.

How Ciena splits revenue in its own release, under its own labels, for Q3 fiscal 2026 against Q3 fiscal 2025. Indented lines are parts of the line above them.

• Ciena's Networking Platforms revenue was $1.4 billion in Q3 fiscal 2026, up 44% from $941 million in Q3 fiscal 2025, 81% of total revenue.
• Ciena's Platform Software and Services revenue was $98.6 million in Q3 fiscal 2026, up 10% from $90.0 million in Q3 fiscal 2025, 6% of total revenue.
• Ciena's Blue Planet Automation Software and Services revenue was $23.2 million in Q3 fiscal 2026, down 17% from $27.8 million in Q3 fiscal 2025, 1% of total revenue.
• Ciena's Global Services revenue was $194 million in Q3 fiscal 2026, up 21% from $160 million in Q3 fiscal 2025, 12% of total revenue.

Segment lines are the figures writers cite most often, because they show where the growth in a quarter came from. Companies redraw their segments from time to time and restate the prior year to match, so a year-ago figure here can differ from the one printed a year ago. When that has happened, the note above says so.

From the earnings release

In its Q3 fiscal 2026 release, Ciena said:

“Providing revenue guidance for fiscal fourth quarter 2026 of $1.75 billion plus or minus $50 million”

“Raising revenue guidance for fiscal year 2026 to $6.42 billion plus or minus $50 million, a 35% increase year-over-year at the midpoint”

“Adjusted (non-GAAP) gross margin in the range of 45% plus or minus 50 bps”

“Adjusted (non-GAAP) operating margin in the range of 20% plus or minus 50 bps”

Source: Ciena Q3 FY26 release, Sep 3, 2026.

This is the company's own guidance as of Sep 3, 2026, quoted as given. Walnut does not make forecasts of its own. Analyst estimates for the coming quarters are on the CIEN forecast page.

Revenue and diluted EPS for the last 5 quarters. Each date links to that quarter's release.

Revenue and GAAP diluted net income per potential common share, each as first reported in that quarter's earnings release.

Ciena's next report is expected around December 10, 2026, a date estimated from its reporting history that the company has not yet confirmed. This page will show Q3 fiscal 2026 until those results are out and have been checked against the release.

Each quarter keeps its own page with the figures as reported, so a link to one stays pointed at the same numbers after the next report.

• Q3 fiscal 2026 (this page), reported Sep 3, 2026

Ciena's revenue was $1,671.1 million in Q3 fiscal 2026, up 37.0% from $1,219.4 million. Networking Platforms, the hardware segment, brought in $1,355.7 million, or 81.1% of the total, and most of that was Optical Networking at $1,191.3 million (71.3% of revenue). Routing and Switching added $164.4 million. (Ciena Q3 FY26 release, Sep 3, 2026)

Optical Networking revenue rose $375.8 million, which Ciena attributes mainly to higher sales of its 6500 Reconfigurable Line Systems, Waveserver systems and coherent pluggable transceivers. Routing and Switching rose $38.5 million on its 3000 and 5000 series service delivery and aggregation platforms, partly offset by lower sales of virtualization software. (Ciena Form 10-Q, Q3 FY26, Sep 3, 2026)

Ciena's software and services segments are smaller. Global Services revenue rose $33.3 million to $193.6 million, mainly from implementation services, and Platform Software and Services rose $8.7 million to $98.6 million on its Navigator Network Control Suite. Blue Planet Automation Software and Services fell $4.6 million to $23.2 million because of lower orchestration software sales. (Ciena Form 10-Q, Q3 FY26, Sep 3, 2026; Ciena Q3 FY26 release, Sep 3, 2026)

Ciena's revenue is concentrated: two customers each accounted for 10% or more of Q3 fiscal 2026 revenue, 41.7% of revenue between them. The 10-Q says a small number of cloud providers are becoming a larger portion of the business as sales to cloud providers grow. U.S. revenue was $1.3 billion, against $882.8 million a year earlier. (Ciena Q3 FY26 release, Sep 3, 2026; Ciena Form 10-Q, Q3 FY26, Sep 3, 2026)

Orders significantly exceeded revenue in the quarter, and Ciena says that, together with an industry-wide constrained supply environment, has left it with historically high backlog. Remaining performance obligations were $2.5 billion at August 1, 2026, most of them due to be satisfied within a year. (Ciena Form 10-Q, Q3 FY26, Sep 3, 2026)

Ciena's GAAP diluted EPS was $1.83 in Q3 fiscal 2026 and its adjusted (non-GAAP) EPS was $2.11, against $0.35 and $0.67 a year earlier. Adjusted results exclude share-based compensation ($57.9 million in the quarter), amortization of intangible assets, restructuring costs, a holdback arrangement tied to the Nubis Communications acquisition, a $7.1 million loss on extinguishment of debt and a $7.7 million gain on early termination of interest rate swaps. The non-GAAP tax rate was 20%, against 22% a year earlier. (Ciena Q3 FY26 release, Sep 3, 2026)

Gross margin rose to 45.4% from 41.3%, which Ciena attributes to higher product gross margin from cost reduction, pricing optimization, product mix and tariff refunds. Interest expense fell to $5.8 million from $22.8 million after Ciena repaid its term loan in connection with a convertible notes offering; the 2031 Notes have a principal balance of $2,875 million. (Ciena Form 10-Q, Q3 FY26, Sep 3, 2026; Ciena Q3 FY26 release, Sep 3, 2026)

Weighted average diluted shares were 145,967 thousand, against 144,499 thousand a year earlier. Ciena repurchased about 0.4 million shares for $171.7 million in the quarter under its $1 billion repurchase program. (Ciena Q3 FY26 release, Sep 3, 2026)

Diluted EPS divides net income by the weighted average number of shares outstanding in the quarter, plus the shares that options and other equity awards could add. Buybacks shrink that count and lift EPS for the same profit; share issuance and stock awards enlarge it.

Ciena gives a numeric outlook in each release. For Q4 fiscal 2026 it guided revenue of $1.75 billion, plus or minus $50 million, adjusted gross margin of 45% plus or minus 50 basis points, adjusted operating expense of $415 million plus or minus $10 million, and adjusted operating margin of 20% plus or minus 50 basis points. (Ciena Q3 FY26 release, Sep 3, 2026)

Ciena raised its fiscal 2026 revenue guidance to $6.42 billion, plus or minus $50 million, a 35% increase at the midpoint. Its earnings presentation lists the assumptions behind the outlook, starting with cloud providers continuing AI infrastructure capital spending at levels consistent with recent public commitments and stable supply of optical components and substrates. (Ciena Q3 FY26 release, Sep 3, 2026; Ciena Q3 FY26 earnings presentation (Exhibit 99.2), Sep 3, 2026)

A consensus figure is the average of the models published by the analysts who cover Ciena, collected by a data provider and revised up to the day of the report. A quarter that lands above it says how expectations were set as much as how the business did, and the share price on the day also reflects the guidance and the lines no consensus covers.

The consensus figures on this page are Yahoo Finance's, as pulled on the date shown. Each comes with the number of analysts behind it; the smaller that number, the more one revised estimate can move the average.

The figures below are the ones Ciena's own release and filings put weight on for Q3 fiscal 2026, with the latest reported value for each.

What the quarter means for a holding is a separate question from what it reported. The case for and against owning CIEN is on is CIEN a buy or a sell?, what analysts expect next is on the CIEN forecast, and what the company does is on the Ciena (CIEN) stock page.

Every number on this page can be traced to a document Ciena published. Checking one takes a couple of minutes, and it is worth doing before you quote a figure anywhere.

• The results release is the document linked in the source line above. Companies publish it on their investor relations site at the moment results go out, and it carries the headline tables: revenue, operating income, net income and EPS for the quarter and the year-ago quarter.
• The same release is filed with the SEC as Exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K under Item 2.02, usually on the day of the report. The SEC copy does not change after the fact, which makes it the safer thing to link when you cite a number.
• The quarterly report (Form 10-Q) follows within a few weeks and carries the full financial statements, the segment note and management's discussion of what changed. The fourth quarter is covered by the annual report (Form 10-K) instead.
• Restated comparisons are flagged in the notes on this page. When a company redraws its segments or changes how it adjusts EPS, it restates the year-ago column, so the year-ago figure in a new release can differ from the one printed a year ago. This page always uses the comparison in the newer release, because that is the like-for-like one.

A walk-through of every line in a release, with what each one tells you, is in how to read an earnings report.