Arista fends off Cisco attack, reports growth

Arista may be fighting Cisco's legal fires in the USA, but it's still managed to post increasing revenue and profit.

The company reported its Q3 2016 on Thursday, with the highlights being an 8 per cent year-on-year uptick in revenue to US$290.3 million; GAPP profit up year-on-year from $28.7 million to $51.3 million; and non-GAPP profit up year-on-year from $42.4 million to $61.2 million.

It's a solid performance, considering that it's been battling a US International Trade Commission (ITC) investigation, sparked by Cisco accusations of patent infringement.

After ruling in Switchzilla's favour in February 2016, it hit Arista with an import ban effective in June. Arista, however, said it had written the controversial code out of its products, continued to ship, and was hit with a further investigation in October.

The litigation has been lucrative for Airsta's lawyers, who reaped $12 million from the Cisco case and a separate case with co-founder OptumSoft.

None of this seems to have stilled its momentum – which aside from righteous intellectual property outrage is probably one reason Switchzilla still has Arista in its cross-hairs.

In its results slides, it claims to have reached nearly 15 per cent share of 10/40/100 Gbps Ethernet data centre ports, while it says Cisco's slipped to 53.1 per cent of the same segment.

Supply chain matters made up much of the company's earnings call as leadership sought to re-assure analysts that efforts to finding new ways to get its hands on components are progressing well, both to just get kit built and to get around the customs ban.

Guidance for Q4 forecasts continuing growth. The company says it expects revenue to be between $310 and $320 million. ®